Coalescence
by Spazztic Revenge
Summary: (Organ Transplant AU) It wasn't all sparks and magic and glitter. When they met, it was blood and death and corded scar tissue that Viktor trailed with his quivering pinky. Meeting your soulmate was supposed to be like two stars exploding on contact, a supernova of feelings and a melding of the souls. It wasn't supposed to be post mortem with your organs replacing theirs.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: My submission to this year's Victuri Big Bang over on tumblr! I had the honor of working with Baph who created such astonishing art for this story. You can find links to the art and Baph's blog on my tumblr and a link to that is in my little bio section. I thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone who joined the bang this year and chatting with everyone on Discord. It was fun stepping away from my main works to delve into this idea that I've had on the back burner for over a year as well.**

 **You can also find this story over on AO3. Baph's illustrations are embedded into the fic on there.**

 **Full Summary: It wasn't all sparks and magic and glitter. When they met, it was blood and death and corded scar tissue that Viktor trailed with his quivering pinky. Meeting your soulmate was supposed to be like two stars exploding on contact, a supernova of feelings and a melding of the souls. It wasn't supposed to be post mortem with your organs replacing theirs.**

 **Or - As Viktor deals with the aftermath of the organ transplant that saved his life, he finds that he may be falling in love with the donor that saved him.**

 **There will be five chapters for this fic. Hope y'all enjoy!**

* * *

He steps up to the curb, Chris all out laughing behind him, and lets the flow of the day carry him. It's the day before the competition and Chris is excited, ecstatic, really, babbling on about how this time is it. His routine is so hot that it will melt the ice, the hearts of his fans, and the medal right out of Viktor's hands. Viktor's going to reply, an encouraging comeback that's tinged with an arrogant challenge, but the taxi pulls up first.

Viktor slides into the cab, waving Chris away with an amused flutter of his fingers. He doesn't know where he's going, or what he wants to do for the remainder of the night, or even for the remainder of his life. He's done skating. This will be his final season. He's yet to tell Yakov, but he's never had to tell his coach these things. The man knows. It's in his eyes, his growly voice when he scolds Viktor, his guiding hand as it clutches Viktor's shoulder. It's a goodbye Viktor feels in his soul. Retiring won't be easy, but skating in his current, listless state is torture.

Viktor stares out the window, watching the world pass by. That's all he ever does anymore. The glass of his window is a lens he is used to.

The crash is sudden. A crunch of metal. A burst of glass that glitters the air. A horn that blares out. The car overturns and the feeling of floating is violent and wild and Viktor feels something for the first time in months.

He's scared.

Darkness takes him like a silent sea that absconds him from reality, calm waves soothing an ache he barely knows.

Viktor survives the trauma, but at the cost of another's life.

First, Viktor feels relief. It floods him as he wakes to Yakov and Christophe and Mila and Georgi and even Yuri. He's engulfed in tears and hugs. Yakov erupts into a spiel about him being too careless on his own, as if he should have predicted the accident. Yuri greets him with a cautious tap of his knuckles against Viktor's bicep and a mutter of, "You can't croak until I beat you, idiot." Viktor finds himself laughing. He's alive and the sensation as its born back into him all at once steals away the earlier melancholia that nearly consumed him.

But then he finds out why he's alive. How he was able to pull through even after the jagged end of a gear shift had shredded his insides.

He's robbed someone of their life.

There's an odd form of loss that swells inside of him. His heart feels tight with mourning, ready for a cloudburst that will pour forth grief for a man that he doesn't know.

The first thing Viktor does when he learns of the news is inquire. Katsuki Yuuri is the answer he's given. The name seems familiar. He knocks it around his brain, tastes it on his tongue, but nothing spills forth. Yakov tells him that he was a skater, a competitor due to skate against him at the GPF. He was on his way from the airport when he, too, fell victim to the crash. The information earns a reaction, a startling tear blossoming from the corner of Viktor's eye. He borrows Chris's phone to learn more - he _has_ to know more - because this isn't right. It can't be real.

The news has yet to break. Everything is still in present tense, like Katsuki Yuuri is still alive and not pulsing inside of Viktor's body.

He's twenty-three. A dedicated young man that splits his life between his schooling in Detroit and his figure skating career under coach Celestino. He's a rising star driven by his love for his home country and the love of his family and fans. There are pictures of him in competitions, in his dorm room, and on the rink in Detroit.

It isn't enough to know him, to accurately feel the life Viktor has stolen. So Viktor clicks on a link and watches the videos.

Katsuki Yuuri skates beautifully. Every movement and action pulses with inspiring emotion, with the blood and fire of life. His jumps are a tad amateur and his delivery is often marred by a wobble or a touch down, but the pure feeling to his routines leaves Viktor breathless and shaking. He isn't skating, he's _dancing_ out on the ice. His feet move in impossible steps and his body twirls and twists in ways beyond imagination. His grace, his passion, are tied up in each performance, his spirit laid bare before the audience.

Viktor watches video after video until a gentle touch upon his shoulder grounds him. As Chris leans in for a careful embrace, Viktor realizes that his face is a mess of tears and snot and misery. He took Katsuki Yuuri's life from him, stole away his dreams, his future. He can only succumb to the cracking pain that splits him apart from the inside out. He wants to know Yuuri. He wants to see him, hear him, skate with him.

But Yuuri is dead.

The morphine is the only thing that helps him sleep that night.

* * *

His days from then on are a blur. He doesn't feel anything. There's a numbness that has seared into his joints, joined with his bones. The only thing he feels, ironically, is what isn't his. Yuuri's heart beats inside his chest, and Viktor finds himself awake at night listening to it. Even when he's being visited by his friends, his dearest skate family, he finds his thoughts slipping away, entranced by the thrumming dance in his chest.

Viktor remains in the intensive care unit for five days before he is moved to a regular room. He doesn't leave until he's stable enough for transport, and even then it is only a little closer to home, to the hospital in Saint Petersburg. It is there that he recuperates, only leaves after he has gone through extensive testing to check his body's acceptance of the heart, has an inordinate amount of meds in his bag, as well as a schedule for his cardiac rehabilitation and appointments with a therapist to help him 'mentally adjust to the change.'

Everyone is loath to leave him alone, but Viktor needs it, sends everyone away with his classic, pasted on smile and a wave that let's everyone know that he's had it. He needs silence. He needs to process. He can't-

When the door closes, Viktor is off. He runs from his spot, the quick movement drawing nausea forth and already stealing his breath. He should be watching his exertion, needs to pace himself with his new heart. Viktor doesn't care.

He's frantic. He knows he has them somewhere. He skids around a corner, slams into the door of his spare bedroom in his haste until he finally twists the knob and runs to the closet. There, beneath old costumes and a fair share of dust, are some of the boxes he keeps.

He has to find them.

The letters from Yuuri.

It's haunted him since his third day awake in the hospital.

 _He's expecting a visit from Yuuri's family. Has begged and pleaded with Yakov to tell the Katsukis that he wishes to see them before they leave with their son's body. He wants to express… something. His condolences? His grief? His gratitude? His unending regret that he is the one that survived, and not their son?_

 _He would trade places with Yuuri in a millisecond if he could. He knows this down to the blood in his veins. But Viktor winces. He'll refrain from saying that. Because he can't. He knows that the sentiment, as true and well intentioned as it is, would not be a comfort. There's no turning back time._

 _It's odd, Viktor thinks, that he would give his life so easily for a stranger's. He's never thought himself suicidal. And he has so much to live for. His career, his Makkachin and… well, his career. But it isn't as though Yuuri was given the choice. If he had, would Yuuri have done it?_

 _If Yuuri was the one laying in this hospital bed staring at the glaring wind of sutures in his own chest, would he have wished for fate to twist her cruel knife in his direction?_

 _A lone knock startles Viktor. He stares across the unending whiteness toward the newcomer and blinks. He recognizes her from a photo of Yuuri's family that had been stuffed within the pages of the internet. It's Yuuri's sister. Yuuri's heart thunders in Viktor's ears and he can't breathe. He feels tears flooding the seams of his eyes, hot and soggy and Viktor thinks that his heart is breaking all over again._

 _He's not ready for this. He wanted this, but he can't do it._

 _"Yuuri would have loved this," Mari says after Viktor has calmed down and awkward introductions have been made. Her eyes are barely open, puffy eyelids half-mast. She stares out into bright city lights through the filter of a smudged window pane. "I mean, not dying, but… his heart is supporting you, Viktor Nikiforov, his hero."_

 _"I was…" Viktor's voice is weak and thready, still off from his time on the ventilator. He tries again. "I was his hero?"_

 _She turns toward him and Viktor expects to find accusation in the shine of her eyes. There is only sorrow. "He_ idolized _you."_

 _Viktor doesn't know what to do with that information. Yuuri was a fan. He wasn't just a fellow competitor, but a fan. Somehow, the knowledge changes things, yet it doesn't._

 _"I can't even tell you how many posters of you he has on his walls. He used to send you fan mail, I think." Mari's voice is distant, and she stares at Viktor's chest like she's talking to it, instead of at it. "Pretty sure if Yuuri had a dying wish, this was it. Right, Niichan?"_

Viktor rifles through his things with something akin to desperation, elbowing past love letters and random plushies. He keeps every fan letter he's ever gotten. They're his _fans_. Throwing out their letters would be like tossing away their hearts. Yuuri has to be in here, last scraps of him left behind.

The first one he finds is full of the tiny, scribbled writing of a child. The words are small, and quiet, and written in a very unpracticed English that is riddled with errors, but they're filled with so much adoration and heart that Viktor feels Yuuri's race in the face of it. Viktor reads it. And reads it again. It tells of the little boy Yuuri was, just a small, chubby thing. There's even a picture, a baby-faced child grinning in his first pair of skates. The letter reads like a thank you note. Yuuri is excited, so excited that his scribbles become illegible, but Viktor plows through it. Yuuri thanks him for inspiring him, for leading him to finding his dream. Because even from the time that he was tiny, stuffed into ill-fitted rental blades and falling face first into the rink, he knew that the ice was where he was meant to be.

Viktor cries after he's read through it the fourth time. He freaks when his tears hit the paper, and he holds it away from himself, protecting it from the onslaught that won't stop. The page is too precious to be destroyed. Viktor calms himself before he dives through the rest. It takes him the rest of the day and he has to go searching for more in storage.

In the end, he feels closer to Yuuri, knows more of this man than just the blurbs on the web. The letters serve as a window into Yuuri's mind, access to his soul, bright and open and sweet. Viktor hates himself for not taking the time to read through his letters before. Not one had been opened, let alone responded to. Viktor may not have tossed Yuuri's heart away, but he neglected it all the same.

"Isn't it funny, Yuuri," Viktor asks himself, splayed out on his bed, coated in torn open envelopes and too many letters to count. "I have your heart now. It feels like I've always had it." _I just never knew._

Viktor can't help but reflect on himself as he sits with a glass of wine that night. He shouldn't be drinking, but the buzz warms the icy freeze that has settled in his veins. Through the haze of his wine, Viktor wonders how things would be if everything was reversed. If Yuuri was sitting here, still breathing, still living. Viktor can't stop feeling like that is the way it should be. Viktor was at the end of his road, considering _retirement_. Yuuri was still fresh, filled with excitement and hope. He was going to school, had a career and a best friend and a family and a life. Between the two of them, Yuuri was the one that deserved the heart. Viktor may have been made of gold and glitz and glamor, but Yuuri had a _life_.

A life that Viktor stole.

The letters keep Viktor from sinking. He's contemplated, a time or two, usually after a night of binge drinking or after staring at his scar until it's burned into his retinas, what death would be like. If he just fell, or never woke up, or brought his razor closer to his skin.

The thought of Yuuri stops him.

Yuuri gave him his heart. Every day is a gift, Yuuri's gift to him.

Viktor decides then that he can't retire. As soon as he's medically cleared, he's going to skate with everything he has. He's going to prove that he deserves this heart. That Yuuri's sacrifice wasn't for nothing.

Viktor hugs Makkachin to himself from his place beneath his duvet, smiles as she gives a put-out sigh.

His thoughts continue as he drifts off.

 _Maybe this is meant to be. Maybe this is what I need to pull myself out of this rut._

Viktor is disgusted by the thought.

* * *

His dreams are of a chipmunk-cheeked little boy. He's on new skates, giving a twirl, a quiet _"ta-da."_ A little brunette is skating with him, taking his hand and laughing.

They're talking, giggling to themselves about the latest competition they watched the night before. She hands him a poster, all rolled up and she bounces in place as she watches him open it. His face is so bright, mouth split with glee as his tongue pokes out through the hole of his missing tooth. _"You didn't?!"_ he exclaims, hugging it. _"Viktor Nikiforov! I'm gonna put it up when I get home!"_

Viktor often dreams of Yuuri from then on, fragments of Yuuri's life that Viktor figures he either memorized from Yuuri's letters or must have simply thought up.

He doesn't realize how true the dreams are.

Or that they are all in Japanese.

And that he understands them.

* * *

Recovery is slow, much to Viktor's chagrin.

Every day that passes feels like he's wasting something. Like even his breath on the air is laden with importance. Every second counts, but he's not quite sure towards what.

His skin itches when he watches his rink mates from the stands, as if hives are bubbling beneath the surface of his skin. His fingers yearn for the quick glide of laces and he needs to feel the wind whip against his cheeks, hear the whoosh in his ears as the world spins in a whirl of colors and screams and-

Nausea settles swiftly in his gut and Viktor leaves, Yakov and his subtle but always present concern at his back. He dry heaves in the quiet stillness of his own bathroom, feels that lens settle back onto his eyes. He wonders if it's the medication, or if he overdid it during his latest therapy session. That has to be the reason for the waves of nausea that crash over him and leave him drowning and gasping for air. His skin feels hot, and Viktor presses his forehead to the side of the tub, clammy skin against cool porcelain.

It has to be the reason that his vision has been blurring in recent days. Without warning his sight will shift, leaving him with a fuzz of shapeless forms and mismatched colors. It happens most often when he wakes, and for some reason he finds himself stretching an arm out, reaching for something that is never there. The action is what startles him. Viktor whips his arm back to his side like it's been scalded and the world shifts back to normal.

He's fine. He's simply adjusting, he thinks, even as alarms blare through his denial.

The doctors at the outpatient transplant center find nothing abnormal at his next check-up. All his disclosing of recent events earns him is an adjustment to his ever growing list of medications.

He takes his anti-nausea pills with a new round of immunosuppressants and antivirals. They don't help, but somehow binging on pickle crisps with a can of sweetened condensed milk does. Viktor's athlete brain balks the minute he eats more than three chips, but Viktor hardly feels like an athlete anymore. He hardly feels like _himself_ anymore. He shrugs and buys three more bags at the convenience store when he runs out in the middle of the night.

Viktor spends an increasing amount of his spare time (most of the time he's not at the outpatient center) researching Yuuri. He reads online blurbs about him, watches old competitions, reads his letters again and again. One can call it obsessing, but it is all Viktor can do until he is finally cleared to fall back into the arms of his beloved ice.

It is all he can do to keep himself from thinking of the changes that are creeping up on him.

Viktor had been briefed extensively on the symptoms of rejection and the side effects of his medications post op in the ICU. Things such as shortness of breath, fever, fatigue, lack of urination, weight gain, and the development of stomach problems, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etcetera.

Nobody told him that he would have mornings where he would look in the mirror and see brown eyes staring back at him. He wasn't warned that he would have moments of xenoglossia where he would suddenly find himself speaking Japanese. He was most certainly not informed that his hand could move on its own in his sleep.

Viktor wakes at his desk. He sits up and wipes his cheek of the drool that he's trailed across his keyboard. His face has typed a string of Ls into the search bar above videos of Yuuri. He's about to clean his laptop up and run off to his next appointment - he's already fifteen minutes behind on travel time - when he finds the new scribbles on the notepad next to his mouse. The top, in his crisp penmanship, is his new list of medications and the hours he takes them.

But beneath that…

Viktor stares. He looks at his hand, grasps it tentatively in his other one and holds it in a shaking grip. He thinks that it has to be some sort of prank. Did he leave the door unlocked? Did Mila or Yuri slip in and attempt to play a cruel joke on him?

Viktor recognizes his own handwriting, even if it is disguised in the characters of another language.

Viktor feels a chill in his bones and doesn't stop staring at the Japanese on the paper until he jams it in a drawer away from view. He doesn't want to know what it says. He doesn't want to know how it happened. He just wants this to stop.

He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He feels like he's being haunted, possessed, and he can guess by who.

"Is this my penance, Yuuri?" Viktor carefully speaks and is relieved to find that it is in the English he intended. "Is this the price for your heart?"

There is no answer.

* * *

There is nothing medically wrong with him. The news is maddening, infuriating, but unsurprising. Ultimately, he is left in the hands of his therapist.

"You think that I am making this up. I can read it on your face," Viktor says calmly and he can. For the blank canvas that her aged face is, Viktor can read the tells. The subtle twitch of her eyelids. The minute purse of her lips. Between the press, his fans and his coach, Viktor has mastered much of the art of reading microexpressions. He can practically read the notes she's been writing this entire session. "You think that this is all the work of my imagination."

In typical therapist fashion, she evades the accusation and comes back at him with a question of her own. "That is an interesting theory. Have you considered that the onset of these symptoms may be psychosomatic? That your mind could be crafting this alternate behavior in its attempt to cope with the accident and this change? This… tragedy?"

Viktor levels her with a look. "I speak Japanese sometimes. I watched an entire Japanese drama and understood all of it. Tell me that was my imagination." She doesn't answer, but her jaw tightens. "How can I understand-" Viktor rises from his chair, because he can't sit there anymore. He doesn't know why, but her stare picks at him, plucks at his sanity one glance at a time. It shouldn't. He's held the eyes of the world for years, not all of them kind. But somehow, now, he finds this unnerving. "How can I know these things? How can I know that Yuuri got a cut on his thigh from trying to land a quad flip right after I won with it at Worlds? How can I know that Yuuri used to make okonomiyaki for his sister on her birthday because it was her favorite?! How can I-"

Viktor stops, hunches over and grips his knees. He can't breathe. An invisible force seems to clench its fists around his lungs and Viktor thinks, _Yuuri, you can't hate me this much, can you?_ Black spots dance in the peripheries of his vision and he can no longer see the woman's face. She's morphed into some blurred, faceless thing.

In the vague shadows of his being, Viktor knows what this is.

"And this…" Viktor gasps, praying that he's still speaking in a language that she can understand. "This is a panic att…ack, yes? Yuuri used to get these… But I-I… I nev…"

The world swirls into black as his breaths seize into a tight ball in his chest.

Viktor doesn't remember anything else.

* * *

He is recommended more therapy after his little breakdown, but he doesn't go.

He lays in bed enduring sleepless nights. When he does sleep, his dreams are not his own. There's a song, one he's never heard spoken in a language he doesn't know. It's in a woman's voice. Her face comes into his vision and Viktor feels who the woman is before he knows. She is the embodiment of home with a sun-warm smile and hugs that unwrap the folds of your heart. Her laugh is as magnetic as it is contagious. The woman brings with her the smell of fried pork and rice and it makes his mouth water and his stomach growl.

She is Yuuri's mother.

He can feel her hand, the gentlest, most tender touch upon his arm. Her hands are warm, but her skin is weathered. The hands of a woman who has worked her whole life and smiled through it. _"Time to get up, Yuuri."_

Viktor wakes to the frigid emptiness of his room. There is no welcoming smile. No light song.

Viktor is left with the most poignant sense of loss.

* * *

"You haven't been going to your appointments." Yakov's comment is as gruff and to the point as ever. They're in Viktor's kitchen as Viktor fiddles with the wooden spoon in his pot of cooking shchi. He feels like he hasn't had a decent meal in weeks. He hasn't been able to stomach much lately.

"You mean with my therapist? I do not need them. She thinks that I am developing a split personality, for god's sake."

"You have to take this seriously, Viktor."

As if he's not. He knows how serious this is. He's losing his body to a dead person. He'd much rather be losing his mind. But he's not. He refuses to accept that this is all in his head. What kind of person would do this to himself? Sure, he felt guilty, immeasurably so, but that doesn't mean that he would develop Yuuri as an alternate self and wear him like he would an old sweater. Just the implication makes Viktor clench his fists.

Yakov continues, steadfast, but there is a catch to his tone. A note of weariness. "If I cannot help you as your coach, then I will have to as your guardian."

Viktor swallows his scoff. "What exactly will you do as my 'guardian'? Ground me? Commit me? I am twenty-seven. Don't make me laugh." Yakov doesn't answer. He simply stands there, holding his hat and staring at Viktor with the eyes of a man that is fifteen years younger. Viktor feels small, like the unruly child he used to be when he would drive Yakov and Lilia up the wall before the table had even been set for breakfast. It was always easier to have their anger directed at him, rather than at each other.

Viktor's sigh is heavy and he watches as it billows his bangs. He holds himself up against the counter, staring down at the pot as it readies to boil over. "I just need time, Yakov."

Yakov steps into his space and swiftly turns the knob of his stove. The flame vanishes and within moments the encroaching bubbles back away and begin to die out. "I'm afraid of what you will do with it."

In his shock, Viktor can't stop himself from snapping, "You think I will-" but he stops short.

Would he?

Viktor thinks about all of the reasons this isn't right. He thinks about what he's doing to himself. The drinking. The poor diet. The sinking hole he's not even trying to fight his way out of.

He thinks about the jittery enthusiasm Yuuri held every morning when he would step out onto the fresh ice. About Yuuri's tireless determination that kept him skating over the scribbles of his failures late into the night until he got it _right_.

The answer is easy as he listens to Yuuri's heart.

No, he couldn't. He has to keep going.

For Yuuri.

* * *

It's when he's sitting in his study alone that Viktor decides that he needs to face this. He's opened his bottom left drawer and is staring at the paper he's repelled from his mind. He translates it with an app and what he reads is something he never expected.

 _Where am I?_

The question is simple, but it brings with it a million thoughts that tremble Viktor down to his knees.

Yuuri has been trying to _communicate_ with him, and Viktor was too busy ignoring the signs, ignoring Yuuri's heart once again.

Viktor stares in his bathroom mirror for a long time. "Yuuri?" he asks, a quiver on his breath. Viktor puts his hand to the mirror, all of his wishes and prayers and intentions pressing into his reflection. He hopes with every ounce of Yuuri's heart that his vision will blur, or that his reflection will change and he'll be granted a brief flash of Yuuri. He needs a sign, something that will tell him that Yuuri is there. That Yuuri has always been there.

Waiting.

"Why do you abandon me now?" Viktor asks, and he feels small again. He looks deep into his own eyes, but he's not seeing them. He's thinking of a little boy unbalanced on new blades. He's thinking of a laugh that's full and vivid and precious. He's thinking of mornings where he wakes to the lightest tune. He's thinking of a sister that speaks to his chest.

He's thinking of a skater whose passion weighs more than his mass. Of a skater he could have met.

They could have skated on the same ice. Won the same competition.

Viktor can imagine it.

Yuuri, trembly and terrified, speechless in his excitement. He can't believe that he gets to meet him, Viktor Nikiforov, his hero. Viktor reaches out a hand, but Yuuri's too stunned that he can't reciprocate the movement. So Viktor reaches just a little farther, into Yuuri's space-

"Do I detect some stage fright, Yuuri?"

He says the words through a smirk, but Viktor can feel his own fear raising the hairs on his neck. He stares at blue-green eyes and silver hair, his pale features that have taken on a sickly pallor he's never known. It is not the reflection he wants to see.

Viktor realizes now how the roles have reversed. It is Viktor who is trembly and terrified, he who is speechless in excitement.

Because as he stares, Viktor feels a glimmer in the air. He watches, motionless as the world shudders behind him. The bathroom evaporates in a fine mist and instead there's a whiteness. The sink is no longer beneath his hands. The air around him has gone frigid and his breath clouds in front of him, fogging against the mirror until it clears.

And there Yuuri is. Skating along like he never stopped. The world is eclipsed in a moon-like, milky white and Yuuri skates on it, simply floats along as if it's his home. He camel spins into a sweeping ina bauer and Viktor can't move, just stares at Yuuri, captivated by the grace, the impeccable flow of movement. Yuuri goes up, skates fleshing the ice as he spins. Viktor can feel it, the whoosh of colors and screams and-

Yuuri falls.

Viktor's breath seizes as Yuuri's form falls away from the reflection and Viktor thinks, _No, not now. I've finally found you_. Viktor turns faster than he can compute the movement, but stops.

He's in a snowy world, covered in ice and a bone-chilling coldness. There is no sound but his breath cutting the air. This world is real, true, not a mere illusion, or a cruel memory. Viktor can feel the crunch of snow beneath his feet. There's a red numbness to his fingers and he clenches them into fists to shield them from the air.

Viktor slowly turns back around to find that the mirror is no longer there.

Viktor gapes at the scene around him, this place he's stumbled into. He can't help but think that he's dreaming. He fell asleep at his desk and he'll wake up to a drool covered keyboard and blocky imprints on his cheek.

There's a groan, and Viktor's ears perk. He searches it out, head whipping around to find an expanse of the purest ice he's ever seen. It's a fine, crystalline blue. In its center is Yuuri, standing up, wiping the ice from his thighs, huffing, _alive_. The hairline cracks in the ice seal up until all that's left is that shiny, new ice that waits to be written into.

Yuuri breathes in. His hands come up in front of him and Viktor recognizes the pose. Yuuri lifts his head.

Their eyes meet.

It feels like he's still spinning.


	2. Chapter 2

Viktor isn't sure what he expected, how he thought Yuuri would answer his calls or how he thought Yuuri would feel. If there would be anger or sadness or jealousy or fear. Or silence.

Viktor knows what he himself feels. It's like he's awake. It's like he's spent the months before this held captive in a horrid, frightening, never-want-to-sleep-again nightmare and now he's been granted a reprieve. He's finally woken to the world he was meant to live in. He gets to meet the person that was ripped from his future. Viktor is sure there's a word for this - fate, destiny, hell. He doesn't know and he doesn't care. All he knows is that Yuuri is in front of him, _right there_.

In his shock, Yuuri is rigid, still stuck in his position, poised like a marionette with its strings taut. He slowly lowers his arms and the ice melts into whiteness. There are no longer skates on his feet, but heavy winter boots. Viktor's brain fails to process most of it, doesn't wonder about the logistics. He's too busy running towards Yuuri, wanting to touch him to make sure that he's real, to hold onto him before he can slip away like ashes in the wind.

Viktor halts before he can. He's in Yuuri's space, breathing in Yuuri's air. Viktor feels a lung-corroding burning in his chest with the proximity, but it's the trepidation in Yuuri's eyes that keeps him from reaching out. Viktor's name is on Yuuri's lips, caught in a quiet stutter, but Viktor's quick to cut in.

"I was trying to talk to you."

Yuuri blinks at him and the air distorts once more until there are glasses perched on his nose. For a moment, Viktor feels his own vision become clearer. "What? I don't…" Yuuri shakes his head, taking a step back. He's scared. Viktor thinks that he's the one who should be scared here. He's the one who has been summoned to this unknown place. He's the one taking on the characteristics of someone who is dead.

Viktor's chest feels heavy. "You haven't been…?"

Confusion sparkles in Yuuri's eyes and Viktor aches all over again. His thoughts turn back to the note, written only once, spoken through the quiet of his slumber.

 _Where am I?_

Maybe Yuuri hasn't been haunting him. Maybe he hasn't been trying to take over, or even speak to him.

Maybe he was just… lost…

And he was doing all he could to be found.

Viktor is startled by a hand as it carefully touches his shoulder, just the barest brush of fingers, like a dragonfly skimming a pond. Yuuri's touch remains there. Viktor's spirit sinks when he doesn't feel any warmth from Yuuri. There is only the frost of the air.

"What are you doing here?" Yuuri asks, and it's like an accusation. As if Viktor has broken some sacred rule. Crossed a boundary. "You're not supposed to be here."

Questions swarm Viktor, dizzying him, but Yuuri's fingers haven't lifted and the touch, as phantom and alien and weird as it is, grounds him. "Where is here?"

Yuuri's brow crinkles. Viktor recognizes the action as if it belongs to his own face. He can translate what it means: Yuuri thinks the answer is obvious.

"Isn't this the afterlife?"

* * *

"So you just woke up here?"

They sit together on some distant, phantom shore. Gone is the icy tundra, the snow that crunched between his toes and left him pink and numb. The second Yuuri saw how he was shaking, shivering from the stabbing freeze attacking his skin, the world had morphed around them. Viktor had stared, too awed to question, too stupefied to be concerned by just where he was, as their surroundings shimmered into the salty, free air of a beach.

Viktor feels familiarity sting him. It's like finding a part of himself, reattaching a lost limb, but this smell and the sound of the tumbling waves don't belong to him.

It all belongs to Yuuri.

Viktor digs his hand in at his side, feels how the sand crumbles between his fingers. It all feels real. Every grain, the powdery sheen left on his hands. Viktor wonders idly what this world is. Is Yuuri right? Is this the afterlife? Is Viktor dead? It should shock him. It should scare him. But inside there's a peace. Viktor isn't sure if that's his own feeling or if it's Yuuri's influence seeping though his skin. He feels safe here.

There's no use for fear or panic. It's not like he can escape. Behind them are miles of sand, a stretch of grey surrounded by bleak, bloated clouds. Before them is the sea, boundless and open. It laps quietly at his toes, nipping with cold teeth. The water is oddly tame for the menacing clouds overhead.

Yuuri is still staring at him, mouth agape like Viktor is a mirage, some precious commodity that is going to evaporate at any moment. To be honest, Viktor has been staring at Yuuri with the same awkward intensity. Neither of them understands what is happening. Viktor doesn't think he should feel comforted by that fact. It doesn't change the fact that he does.

It takes an elongated minute for Yuuri to absorb the question. Viktor smiles a disarming smile while he waits, but it seems to only fluster Yuuri more. "I… ah, yeah…" Yuuri shakes his head and smiles back through his discomfort. Pain distorts his face for only a moment before it's thrown into the sea with his gaze. "It… It was like hitting the ice after a fall. It took a few seconds for everything to register. You know, first you take a mental stock of yourself, figure out what went wrong, then get up and go." Yuuri sucks his lips between his teeth, eyes flitting back and forth across waves that crest with renewed vigor. Their easy push and pull grows more aggressive, as if sapping from Yuuri's distress. "But there was nowhere to go. I couldn't figure out where I was or how I got here. All I had was this sand and the Hasetsu Bay. Heh, I guess it should have been comforting. My home." Yuuri stops, swipes his wrist beneath his nose and sniffs back well-worn emotions.

"You've been here all by yourself since?"

Oddly enough, Yuuri laughs. It's so startling and out of place that it catches Yuuri off guard just as much as it does Viktor. Viktor doesn't like it. It's a low chuckle, dark and scathing as it crackles out of Yuuri's clogged throat. It doesn't hold the vibrancy that Viktor's ears have branded as Yuuri.

"I thought that I really had fallen. That this was what it was like when you were in a coma for a really long time."

Viktor reads the time on Yuuri's face, the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, _months_ that he's spent alone. No company, no explanations. Just a beach. Viktor wonders how time flows here. He swallows against a knotted ball of agony working its way up his throat as he imagines the months like years.

"But," Viktor prompts, because Yuuri knows yet Viktor doesn't want Yuuri to know. He wants Yuuri to remain ignorant, to stay waiting in this place, hoping that someday he will wake. Viktor wants to protect Yuuri from the knowledge that he more than fell and that Viktor is the reason he won't wake up, _can't_ wake up, because Viktor has his heart and oh, _god_ , his scar burns like he's run hot metal across it and he tries not to hiss against the pain, but it hurts, it's so hot, so bright, he wonders if Yuuri can see it, can sense it because it is his heart, his pain-

"I remembered."

A wave crashes. The scorching feeling is snuffed out. His chest cools and Viktor feels the urge to run his fingers down the incision line, make sure Yuuri's heart is still there. That it always will be. Instead he pulls Yuuri in and hugs him.

Yuuri gasps. He doesn't pull away, but he doesn't reciprocate the action either. Viktor thinks that it's okay. He just wants to comfort Yuuri, and maybe himself, too. Viktor's sorry. He's so horrendously sorry that Yuuri is stuck here, left to live this half-life of solitude. He's sorry that Yuuri knows. That he remembered what it was like to die and knows that he will never come back.

Viktor hurts with Yuuri's pain. It's a knife that stabs into him and he feels like a magician caught in one of those sword boxes, only he doesn't know how to maneuver, how to avoid the next blow.

Viktor doesn't know what to say. It's like he's facing Mari all over again. Trapped with too many feelings tangling his tongue. Another knife of pain stabs into him with that thought. Yuuri's sister. Yuuri will never see her again. He will never see anyone again. Yuuri has faced those thoughts. He's sat here alone, watched the sun brood over the horizon, skated on a perfect whiteness, and realized that there is nowhere left for him to go.

Viktor doesn't know why he's been brought here, if he's dead, if this is really the afterlife, but Viktor thinks that at least Yuuri isn't alone anymore. Viktor knows this silence, this isolation of living in your own world by yourself. There is no feeling more empty.

Viktor vows to himself. He will keep Yuuri company for as long as he is able. It feels like he's supposed to, that he needs to. It's a calling from deep inside.

There's a sob in Viktor's ear, a hiccupped "I thought there would be no one else…" and Viktor tries to hold on tighter. He clenches his arms, but suddenly they fold into his own chest. Viktor jolts, tries to reach for Yuuri who is _right there_ , but is somehow intangible now. Viktor's hands phase right through Yuuri's form like Yuuri really is a ghost.

No, it is Viktor that's the ghost. He can see through his own hands. He feels like he's floating.

 _What is happening? Where am I going now? What-_

There's a sensation on his leg, a blunt tapping, but he looks down and nothing is there. All that's there is the beach that he can no longer feel beneath him.

Viktor looks up and tries calling out to Yuuri. His lips form his name. He breathes it out.

There is no sound.

Yuuri is scrubbing the tears from his face with his sleeve. Panic flits through his eyes. Yuuri's mouth makes a little o as realization shatters across his confusion. Then there's a small smile that Viktor doesn't understand.

"Looks like you aren't supposed to be here after all."

No. No, Viktor doesn't want to leave. Not yet.

"Yuuri!"

He reaches out and bangs his hands into the mirror. He's in his bathroom again. There is no beach. Yuuri is gone. Viktor stands back on his heels, his arms falling to his sides before he clutches his chest. "It really was you, wasn't it?" The shape of Yuuri is still imprinted on his arms. He can feel Yuuri's tears like a permanent streak on his skin.

He knows it wasn't a dream, or some fantasy thought up in his head. He's still alive so it wasn't some near-death experience. He wasn't moving on.

It was like he'd met with Yuuri somewhere inside of himself. Their souls converged together somewhere between Viktor's new heart and Yuuri's soul.

If that was true, then was Yuuri stuck there? Inside of him?

If that was true, then that meant that he could meet him again.

Yes, Viktor will see Yuuri again.

He will not abandon him.

Makkachin shoves her nose into Viktor's thigh, a huff of breath caught behind the leash in her mouth. She's clearly displeased, sitting back on her haunches and batting the floor with her paw as if telling him, 'Right this instant.' Viktor glances at his phone on the sink. It's a half an hour past Makkachin's walk time.

"So it was you?" Viktor walks to his pooch, legs wobbly like he's been walking in sand for too long and now his legs don't know what to do with the hard ground. If Viktor breathes in, he can still catch a whiff of the briny shore. Of Yuuri's scent beneath his nose. "You want to go for a walk, Makka?" Viktor catches the paw she offers, laughs as she spins around before sitting and waiting again. "Alright. Let me get your harness."

* * *

Viktor tries to summon Yuuri again. He talks to him in the darkness of his room at night, in the early morning shadows as he doesn't sleep. Viktor sits, his hand above a fresh pad of paper and a pen poised in his hand until his finger muscles creak and cramp. He stares into his mirror for hours until there's a glimmer, a flicker. Viktor's hopes clump in his throat.

Until the bulb above him goes out.

Nothing works and Viktor only grows more distraught. He feels attached to that world. Like he's left half of himself there and needs to get back. Yuuri is waiting, but Viktor is just as stuck here as Yuuri is there. Every time Viktor dreams of Yuuri's memories or he catches a hint of Yuuri's past within himself he aches all over again. Skepticism wears him thin until he's ready to believe that his entire encounter with Yuuri was nothing but the desperate conjuring of a delusion.

Even if it wasn't, it doesn't seem like he's ever going to see Yuuri again. It hurts less to think that he simply made it all up.

Viktor goes back to his therapy. It's easy to fool the woman. He's already fooled himself. He talks like everything's back to normal. Like he doesn't still think of lonely little Yuuri waiting for him in the sand. He takes his medications and all of his biopsies come back normal. Yuuri's heart is not rejecting him, though it feels like it already has.

It's easy and often that Viktor trespasses into more pieces of Yuuri. But this time, something feels different. This hint of him is stronger. It builds a yearning in Viktor's chest to see him, to know just what this is.

He's out walking Makkachin, waiting as she snuffles her nose between the branches of a bush. A woman passes by and it's the smoke that wafts off of her that acts almost like a sedative. Viktor feels… calmer, as if the fritzed ends of his nerves have been stemmed off, blunted. The smoke itself is disgusting. It sticks in his nostrils and leaves his throat feeling scratchy, as though he's swallowed wool. But there's a sense of security that he finds in that scent, that passing puff of air.

The cigarette is discarded, tossed onto the pavement where it rolls towards the soles of Viktor's shoes. He considers it, stoops low and holds it between his fingers. He imagines it behind an ear, concealed by a puff of curly hair and hidden behind mismatched earrings. He can hear the sound it makes as it's rubbed between nicotine-stained fingertips.

"I was so afraid that you weren't coming back."

Viktor looks up and Yuuri is standing in the middle of winter again. Makkachin is nowhere to be found. Neither is the street or the woman or the cigarette. Viktor stands. He's on a different street corner, somewhere Viktor's never been, yet he knows that if he keeps walking and takes two rights, he'll make it to the market.

Yuuri smiles with tears prickling at the corners. He's in a puffy jacket that swallows him and the beanie on his head is freckled with snow. Footprints are scattered around them, going every which way. They all hold the same pattern and Viktor would bet that they match the soles of Yuuri's boots. Viktor imagines Yuuri dancing in the street just as he does on the ice.

Did.

Does?

Guilt is a heavy brick banging against Viktor's head until he blurts, "You're stuck here because of me."

Yuuri's eyes widen. He pushes his glasses farther back on his nose until the light of the streetlamp glares off his lenses. "I know."

"How…?"

Yuuri considers for a moment. He holds out his hand, watches as flakes descend down only to melt along rosy fingers. His hand looks so flushed with cold that it must hurt. But Yuuri is dead. Does he feel the cold? Is the snow icy in his hands, or has he lost the sensation as he is now only a presence?

 _You have to feel it. You're alive inside of me. I know it._

Viktor wants to hug him again just to prove it.

"I see things sometimes. Some things I recognize as belonging to you… Makkachin. Coach Feltsman. And some things I don't understand, or I guess I understand but don't want to. Lots of videos of me. A clinic room. Files and brochures on donor recipient recovery."

Viktor feels himself reeling, as if the world has turned on its axis and rapidly began spinning in the other direction. Yuuri has been seeing his life, too? That would imply that there is some kind of window between them. A window that allowed them to see both ways. "But…"

"I pieced some things together. I wondered why I was somehow attached to you, though I thought I was in a coma. I thought it was just," a swell of color reaches Yuuri's already flushed face and he cups his hands to his mouth, "because I admired you." His hands fall and he curls his mouth to the side. "But then I saw a dedication page. I heard people talking to you. I saw-" Yuuri's gaze falls to Viktor's chest, then flits away with a guilty sprint.

Viktor looks down at himself. Oh. His scar. It's an unsightly, purplish streak molding his skin back together. He often finds himself staring at it when he changes clothes, as he showers, or when he needs to remind himself that this is all real. Viktor tugs his coat closer to himself.

"You showed up here and things made more sense. You got a part of me, didn't you? That's why we're connected. That's why I'm here."

 _I couldn't have protected you from the truth if I'd wanted to._

"Your heart."

Yuuri stares before his own hand climbs up his torso and lays to rest in the middle of his chest. Viktor can feel the way Yuuri's heart pounds. Is there a pulse beneath that hand, Viktor wonders, or is it empty? Did Viktor steal his heart in this world, too?

"We were both going to compete at Sochi," Viktor continues, ignoring the way Yuuri's beating heart has cottoned over the rest of the sound around him. "We were in the same accident. You…" Gruesome imaginings are called forth and Viktor is somewhat grateful that out of everything Yuuri's death is not something he's had to experience through their connection. Yuuri said he remembers, but he hasn't let on to just how vivid his memory is. Viktor keeps it as brief as he himself knows. "They fixed up most of your body in surgery, but your brain-"

"Died."

"…Your organs were still viable and I needed a heart." It almost sounds like a transaction. A deal. Callous and cold. Yuuri was done with his heart, so Viktor took it. He doesn't want Yuuri to think that, but he knows that any other explanation is useless. There is no pretty wrapping or bow that can cover over the ugliness of this truth. "I didn't wake up until it was already done. Your parents released your organs, and Yakov accepted it for me."

Viktor watches the words sink into Yuuri's expression. He's quiet for some time. Winter seems to swallow all sound and it only amplifies Yuuri's silence. "We were both going to compete." It's not a question. Viktor nods anyway. "We were in the same accident." Another nod. "You got my heart." Viktor's head bobs forward on automatic now. "It's almost like-"

"Fate," Viktor whispers, then cringes. Yuuri is dead. He's living inside of Viktor's body because he took Yuuri's heart. Yuuri doesn't need his death translated into having some romanticized meaning.

But Yuuri smiles, his breath puffing into the air as snow crystalizes his eyelashes. "Yeah."

* * *

Viktor still isn't exactly sure where they are or how this is possible, but he hesitates to dig deeper. To know. This mystery that he's found himself wrapped in seems all too breakable. Like it could all shatter with any prodding or probing. Like the fabric that keeps Yuuri and him stitched together would tear with the weight of truth.

All Viktor knows is that Yuuri is here in front of him. Another gift, he thinks, although he doesn't know if that's how Yuuri sees it.

"How are you not weirded out by this?" Yuuri asks as they walk. They've been walking down a snowy path, passing by the same streetlamps and benches. It's a scene on repeat. They're walking but they never get anywhere.

"Should I be?"

"You found out that there's this- this- spirit- ghost thing attached to you because you have another person's heart. Don't you find that the slightest bit creepy?"

A hitch of laughter slips through Viktor's lips despite his attempt to stifle it. "Spirit-ghost-thing?"

Yuuri rolls his eyes. "I have no idea what I am."

"What do you feel like?"

"Honestly?" Yuuri pauses, hand to his chin like he's never thought to question his own existence before. "I feel like a person. I feel like me."

"That's how I see you." Yuuri's gaze turns skeptical before he kicks up a boot full of snow at Viktor. "I mean it," he says as he turns, barely escaping the splash of fluff. "I see you as you."

Yuuri's answer is a lot quieter, muffled as he speaks into the wind of his scarf. "You don't know me."

Viktor stops. He tugs on the puff of Yuuri's coat to get him to quit walking. "I've been seeing things about you, too. Well… not exactly like you have, but- I've been dreaming about your past. I've been experiencing life like I am you. You want to talk about creepy? I've been speaking your language and my vision's been going blurry," Viktor pokes at the edge of Yuuri's glasses, "amongst other things. Some days I feel like I am more you than me."

Yuuri turns, his nose scrunched up in distaste, as if Viktor meant it as some kind of an insult. There's embarrassment in the twinge of his cheeks, too. Viktor finds it amusing because, yes, he's seen Yuuri at his lowest, nosediving into the ice and binge-eating through exams. He's seen Yuuri like a fanboy with his room full of posters and flipping through every magazine interview Viktor's ever done. But those moments and truths that Yuuri would probably hide from the world are what make Viktor feel close to him. Viktor feels like Yuuri is the realest person he's ever known. As a spirit-ghost-thing or not.

"I feel like I know you."

Yuuri flinches, but Viktor's not sure why. "But I don't know you."

"I think you know me a lot more than you're willing to admit~" Yuuri pouts. It's hilarious. Yuuri is so easy to tease. "It's never too late to learn more."

"Says the peeping tom."

Viktor scoffs, but Yuuri is smiling. Viktor blinks and there's a ball of snow splatting against his face. He sputters, dancing around to get the ice crystals off of his face and out of the collar of his coat. "You did _not_ just-"

Yuuri laughs, holding his stomach. And _that_ is the laugh that Viktor knows. Bright and vibrant like summer clouds.

That's how they spend minutes that may very well be hours or days. Balls of snow are chucked back and forth. They hide behind trees and sneak around telephone poles. Viktor gets a face full of snow even when he attempts to dodge. Yuuri somehow trips on his own shoes and gets a snow mask of his own. Viktor feels the sting of the cold in his cheeks, but he also feels the width of his smile.

They're huffing in breaths, Viktor bent over as he holds his knees while Yuuri rests against a tree, when Viktor asks, "What do you do here?" He's been chewing on the thought while in the real world. If Yuuri lives inside of an unknown plane, what does he do with the time on his own?

"I used to do this," Yuuri tosses up his arms, gesturing to the area around them "when I was alive. Imagine a world in my head. When things would get too tough, when the world felt like it was too big, turning too fast, I would escape. I would make up a world to live in, for just a moment. Some serene scene I could focus on to see me through the challenge."

The world around them changes with a flick of Yuuri's wrist. The indigo-tinged darkness of night gradually lightens, time rewinding as colors return to the sky. Blues hasten to purples and the reds and oranges and pinks of sunset still around them. Yuuri's face is caught in the half-light of twilight, warm colors deepening his eyes.

A thought wiggles its way into Viktor's mind for the umpteenth time since he first saw Yuuri skate on Chris' too-big phone.

Yuuri is beautiful.

Yuuri's fingers twitch and puffs of salmon colored clouds form in the sky. Viktor marvels over Yuuri's creation, how he can manipulate everything in this place. Create beauty out of nothing. This world may exist inside of Viktor's body, but it belongs entirely to Yuuri. His very own kingdom.

"What would you think up?" Viktor asks, still in a bit of a daze even as he craves to see more.

Yuuri's eyes wander over their surroundings. "Sometimes I thought about snow, what it would look like if it wasn't white. What color would it be? Would it be blue? Like winter. Like sorrow. Silver? Like silence. Or if it could take on the colors of the world, come down like a rainbow given life."

Little flakes of color drift down from nothing, summoned simply by Yuuri's words. Viktor feels a cold fleck on his cheek. He wipes it away and finds a green-tinted water trail.

"Could snow have a taste?"

Viktor sticks his tongue out, waits until a pink flake dies out in his mouth. "Pink lemonade." Perhaps it's just his imagination, but he can taste the hint of bitterness on his taste buds, there and gone.

"What if rain had a sound? If each drip fell with a chime."

In that instant, the mood of their surroundings change. The scenery darkens, grows heavier and warmer. Viktor feels the density to the air around him, almost weighing him down. Wetness prickles his skin as the rain falls softly. Each droplet falls with the lightest tap, the ding of a bell. All of them come together in a symphony of sound.

"What if you could walk on water? Dance on waves? If you could breathe in space. In the middle of thousands of stars. Float along in the swirl of a galaxy."

Viktor expects the world to shift according to Yuuri's instruction, but it doesn't. Viktor watches Yuuri. Yuuri's eyes gaze up into his man-made sky, his arms open to the fall of the rain as it soaks him. The jangle of the water dims, but it's still there, like the hum of a music box. Yuuri appears to be caught in the moment and Viktor is content to stare. He wonders if Yuuri is feeling everything that Viktor is. If the rain stings his eyes and he has to blink to get the blurry circles out. If the rain drips down his cheeks and collects in the bow of his lip until he has to lick the water off. If the rain tastes like salt and dirt. If his clothes are getting heavier on his frame, and the dampness makes him shiver.

"What do you feel right now, Yuuri?"

Yuuri drops his arms. He looks at Viktor and Viktor thinks that Yuuri has one of the most serene expressions he has ever seen. It may also be the saddest.

"I feel alive."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Many thanks to Echo, my lovely reviewer here. I can't reply to you because you're a guest, but I wanted to make sure you knew that I hear you! Thank you so much for the kind words.**

 **Hope you all enjoy the new update!**

* * *

The rain clears and with a mere turn of his hand Yuuri returns their clothes to a crisp, dry state. Viktor feels along the sleeves of his coat, awestruck still even after all he has seen. It's like he's standing next to God. Viktor feels the sudden urge to pray.

That this isn't a dream. That he can stay here. That this moment won't end all too soon.

They're back on the beach and Viktor asks Yuuri to talk about himself, to tell him the things he may already know but would like to hear from Yuuri anyway. He knows Yuuri's life, his perspective, his feelings. They aren't Viktor's moments to know, even if they feel like they are.

Viktor doesn't want to break into Yuuri's life anymore. He wants an all-access pass that is granted, not stolen.

Viktor leans back, hands and feet buried beneath sun-toasted sand. He watches the water glisten with the sun's reflection, glittering like a carpet of jewels, and he can't believe that this is all Yuuri, a reality scraped from mental images and sensory memories. Mist billows off of the waves like whispered thoughts breathed into the air or deep sighs being released. It hits Viktor's face in a delicate caress and even that derives from Yuuri's mind. Viktor wonders how Yuuri has the energy to think of it all.

Speaking of…

"C'mon, Yuuri. I can hear you thinking over there."

"You can do that, too?" Yuuri asks, appalled as his hands rush to cover his ears, as if he can keep his thoughts from leaking out.

"It's just an expression, Yuuri."

Yuuri is hesitant, suckling on his lower lip as his fingers skitter in the sand. They draw shapes, formless and empty, their birth a simple distraction. "I'm not… I'm really not all that exciting."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?"

Yuuri speaks slowly. He stutters sometimes, but only when he's truly well and nervous. It's often at first, as he fumbles over topics, or is earnestly trying to phrase something he doesn't know how. Viktor likes watching Yuuri talk. He's lost track of how many expressions Yuuri has, and when Yuuri finally eases fully into the conversation, forgets that he's dead and talking to his idol and knows that he can speak open and freely without being ridiculed, his smile lights up Viktor's vision. Yuuri has as many smiles as he has eyelashes and Viktor tries to memorize every one.

Yuuri is here now, and he can tell his story himself. With his words, through his mouth and with every inflection and intonation of his voice. There's an intimacy here, listening to another person tell their story. There's trust given in every word, built up slowly until they become something other than the strangers they are.

"-and I tried to collect all of my plushies at my first real competition. Wouldn't get off the ice until I had every one. My face was a wreck of grossness and I couldn't hold them all and I accidentally skated over one. Cut this baby tiger's head right off," Yuuri draws a line across his throat with his index finger, expression the cutest shade of distressed, "and I was trying to pick up all of its stuffing off the ice as I cried _more_. Pretty sure I was a disaster. God, I embarrassed Mari so much. But my parents and Minako-sensei were so proud."

Viktor feels it, from the light in Yuuri's eyes to his own beating heart. Viktor remembers seeing that pride in Yakov's eyes, in Lilia's when he was still her pretty ballerina. There's nothing like seeing that on the people you love. Feeling it from the people that have watched you grow and built you up into who you are with the hammers and nails of time and support.

The moment falls away from Yuuri. Something hitches in Yuuri's throat, tangles his vocal cords. "I felt so selfish. Sucking up their income to pay for my dreams. The inn… still isn't doing well… I was going to help when I retired. I would have paid my parents back and helped Mari take over so she wouldn't have to do it alone…" His fingers claw into the sand, scraping over his thoughtless designs. His hand flies to his mouth, catching the cracked sob that wrenches itself out of his soul.

Viktor doesn't know what to do. He's watched this happen. Yuuri has slammed up against many hurdles in his life. Many have left him like this, shaking and sobbing and drowning in himself. His mother would help him through it with songs and warm food. Mari would help him through it with a smoke-soaked presence, a shoulder to cry on and a flick to the forehead afterwards as she would tell him to pull himself together. Phichit would breathe it out with him on the floor of their dorm room. Celestino would be quick to encourage, pat him on the back and push him forward. Yuuri had support when he was alive, but here, like this… There is no one. No one but him and his kingdom of one.

Viktor doesn't think a hug can cure this kind of pain.

He doesn't have any quick Band-Aids of breathing exercises or katsudon.

So Viktor talks over the tears.

"I read your letters."

Ignoring the pain won't swipe it clean, but he can divert Yuuri's attention from it for now. Yuuri's scratchy and ragged breathing calms. Mortification climbs up his cheeks, staggering his expression.

"Oh no."

"I especially like the one you sent with the picture of you in that shirt of-" The rest of Viktor's words are garbled as Yuuri slams his hands over his lips.

"I can _not_ believe I sent that. I was like twelve!"

Viktor laughs, licking Yuuri's hands to get them off.

Yuuri rips himself away. He looks at his hands and Viktor can read the mental war on his face, whether he should furiously try to wipe the saliva off or keep it there as a memento because it is _Viktor Nikiforov_ 's precious spit. It makes Viktor laugh more.

Yuuri laughs, too.

Then Viktor feels it. That sensation. That floating feeling that Viktor has quickly grown to despise.

Yuuri must sense it from his expression. He grabs for Viktor's arm. To their shock, he makes it in time. Yuuri's grip is bruising as he twists Viktor's wrist like he's wringing out a soaked towel. "Wait. Here all alone… I feel like I've been suffocating. I can't- Just- Wait-"

Yuuri's hand is slowly falling through his arm and Viktor curses this. Their circumstances. This limbo that keeps Yuuri from him and eats at what little time they have together. Viktor would wait for Yuuri forever, if he could.

"No, I guess… I guess you can't help it."

Viktor wants to cry when he reenters the real world. Makkachin is still sniffing the bush and the cigarette is burning out in his fingers. It's like no real time has passed. Viktor feels the time like a tattoo in his brain. It's all he thinks about, Yuuri's face as he asks Viktor to wait.

It's crushing.

It's Yuuri's face, that feeling Viktor has that he needs to be by Yuuri's side, that Viktor focuses on.

His heart listens.

Slowly, over time, traveling back and forth becomes easier. He envisions Yuuri, he breathes in time with the beats of Yuuri's heart, and somehow Viktor squeezes into this space in between. Into that place that Yuuri reigns. The place that is now not just his, but theirs. Every visit brings them closer, makes the path a little clearer. Viktor can almost do it on command. When Viktor sees Yuuri, he tells him that he was thinking about him, and Yuuri says that he was thinking about him, too.

It makes the real world harder.

* * *

There's darkness when Viktor visits again. Everything is black and Viktor panics, hands in front of his body, searching for something tangible to hold, to see. Viktor feels like he's inside of a box, dank and quiet and he's completely closed in. His breathing crawls through his lungs. He wonders if he's woken up in a coffin, if this is what it's like to survive death, trapped and buried and lost.

 _Is something wrong? There has to be something wrong. Where is Yuuri?_

A flickering funnel of light comes into view, springing up from the floor.

Viktor is in a room. One he recognizes. The small space. The beige comforter. The keyboard that hasn't been played since Yuuri was seventeen. The cactus that Mari gave him as a gag gift one year. _"You can't kill this, Yuuri."_

The posters.

The air returns to him.

Yuuri is on the floor. He's sprawled out, gripping a flashlight, hair mussed and glasses askew, looking all the world like he was simply napping while Viktor thought that he was gone. That Yuuri had disappeared. A spark of irrational anger ignites within Viktor. He had a mini heart attack and it's not Yuuri's fault but all the same Viktor wants to stomp over to him and yell at him to never scare him like that again.

Viktor's vision is suddenly flooded with white. He hisses at the sting, shading his eyes from the assault of light. He can see Yuuri around his hand, a flashlight held close in the other's possession. Protection. From the dark. From the unknown.

Yuuri exists in the unknown.

"Kind of blinding me, Yuuri."

"Gomen!" The light rushes back to the ceiling. Viktor attempts to blink the fluttering spots out of his eyes. "S-Sorry. You startled me, that's all."

"Who else would I be?" he asks, voice edged with irritation. The question holds more truth than either of them are prepared for. Yuuri acts like it doesn't injure him.

"No one, I suppose."

"What are you doing in the dark?" Viktor asks, lifting the heaviness from beneath Yuuri's eyes. He lays down beside Yuuri, arm beneath his head as he kicks back. Yuuri's floor was bigger in his memories. Viktor shifts his legs so they're under Yuuri's desk, in between chair legs.

"Making shadow puppets."

"What are shadow puppets?"

Yuuri sits up with a gasp, light spazzing with the movement. "You've never made shadow puppets?"

"No?"

"What did you do when you were a child?"

"Skate," Viktor and Yuuri chime.

Viktor stares.

"Called it."

Viktor's almost embarrassed. He can feel it in the stretch of his smile. He hopes that the shadow he's cast in hides it.

"But that's what makes you the best," Yuuri finishes and that's that. Yuuri goes to nestle the flashlight between his thighs, and Viktor doesn't think about the enclosed space, the way Yuuri's thighs cushion around the flashlight's body, how content Viktor would be in the flashlight's place. "What do you see?"

Viktor redirects his gaze, instead focusing on how Yuuri twists and bends his fingers over the light. "Um. Your hands in a very painful position."

Confusion descends upon Yuuri's brow before he heaves a sigh and chuckles. "Don't look at my hands, doofus. Look at the ceiling."

"Oh." Viktor looks and he gets it. There's a form projected by the light, a shadow puppeted by Yuuri's movements. A shadow puppet. Duh. "It's a dog. I think?"

"Yup," Yuuri says, glowing with pride. "I spent a whole summer of camp practicing this. I can make like… eleven things."

"A summer well spent."

Yuuri elbows him in the bony arch of his hip. "Here, you try." He grabs Viktor's hands and yanks him up. Viktor is thrust forward, half leaning in Yuuri's lap, forearm across Yuuri's thigh and their faces are nearly cheek to cheek. Viktor's brain momentarily fritzes, Yuuri's presence now all the more potent. They're so close. Viktor can feel Yuuri's breath, steady puffs against his cheek. Yuuri's voice, almost right in Viktor's ear, sends a shiver that knocks his bones. Yuuri tries to show him how to hold his hands, one flat hand simply cast behind the other, but Viktor's not paying attention. With a huff, Yuuri takes his hands into his own. Viktor can feel the warmth of Yuuri now, can feel the bend of Yuuri's joints between his own, the friction as their fingers slide together.

"There."

Viktor looks up at their creation. He gives a rough cough, clearing out the hormones nesting in his throat. "It's a butterfly."

The little that Yuuri knows about shadow puppets becomes clear when they run out of formations. It then becomes a guessing game as the two try to mesh their fingers together in odd ways to make anything that actually exists. They both kind of suck at it.

"It's a… banana."

Stark indignation cuts across Yuuri's face and his hands slap against his thighs with dramatic flair. "It's a dolphin!"

"Calm down. I did it on porpoise."

Yuuri smacks a hand to his face. It doesn't quite cover his smile. "That was bad. And no you didn't. Don't try to play me."

"I wouldn't _dream_ of playing you, Yuuri." Viktor makes his voice turn sultry, lilting a finger under Yuuri's chin and drawing him closer. Instead of making Yuuri flustered, of making him turn all kinds of colors and stutter as he scrambles away, Yuuri raises an unimpressed brow as he knocks Viktor's hand away.

"Maybe I'd be more successful at picking out constellations," Yuuri wonders aloud as he lays back down. The flashlight vanishes from between them. Yuuri's room melts away and the open air hits them. Freshly trimmed grass sprouts up between them, prickling Viktor's skin. It smells sun-roasted, like bonfires and beaches and summertime. The night sky is vibrant above them, shimmering with stars. Sparse clouds float across, swimming among a million sparkling lights.

Viktor's still thinking about Yuuri's callous disregard toward his advance. It was a halfhearted joke, but still. Where did his adorable fan go that grew nervous by his mere presence? Viktor's a little disheartened, but mostly he's excited.

Yuuri is calm, present in the moment as he lays there, the gentle breeze chilled as it pimples his flesh, stars reflected in those striking eyes that emote with all of the life Yuuri houses. He's staring up with bright-eyed wonder, gaze travelling from star to star, visibly counting across the wide open expanse. Luminous spots of blue and white twinkle above like Christmas lights against a black backdrop. Swirls of purple sweep across space, a sprinkling of cosmic dust trailing after like the last dribbles off a paint brush. This sky in all its magnificence is only a fabrication, a copy of a memory of some past night that Yuuri thinks back fondly over, but he stares up at it like it's the first time. He's placed himself back in a moment that is as timeless and eternal as this world they're breathing in.

Viktor wonders if he's ever seen a night sky quite like this, or if he ever will again.

He knows that he won't.

He lays down amongst Yuuri and the stars. He could live with just this for a very long time. He reaches over and cups his hand over Yuuri's, fingers slotting together. Viktor can feel Yuuri stiffen, how his fingers tremble. He can hear his brain imploding on itself. Or maybe that's all Viktor. Such an innocent gesture makes Viktor's stomach bubble and boil with nervousness and he can't get his giddy thoughts to shut up when Yuuri turns over his hand to take Viktor's more firmly into his grasp.

This moment is entirely theirs. There will be no other one like it. Viktor thinks that this can't get any more enchanting.

Yuuri proves him wrong. Stars begin a slow descent from the sky, tiny gems drifting down for no reason other than by Yuuri's whim. They fall like luminescent drops, floating down around them until their precious light fades into the ground.

Yuuri catches one in his mouth. He sticks out his tongue like he's beckoning a snowflake. A star lands there and hovers until Yuuri closes his mouth around it. He smiles a brilliant, blue-hued smile.

Another smile to store away.

To never forget.

* * *

Viktor's dreams take a turn. They become his own. A memory of crunching, twisting metal. Of crunching, twisting bone. Glass breaks, shattering into crystal pieces that scatter everywhere, beautiful like shooting stars that cut into his skin, drawing blood and flaring wisps of pain along his body. He can see the sky, up from where he lays broken around a seatbelt.

He can't feel anything. He can't look at anything but the sky.

A memory toys with his brain, flashing back to moments before everything went spinning out of control. He can see a person in the car next to him, sitting back, head lolled against the backrest, forehead kissing the cool glass and leaving a foggy smudge. Viktor can just make out the black of an ear bud plugging his ear. He's writing something in the fog of the window.

 _Where am I?_

Then there's spinning and crunching and blackness.

Viktor thinks he can hear the music.

Viktor's quiet when he comes back, ragged from another night of lost sleep. Yuuri's worried, asking him what's wrong. Viktor wants to say that it's nothing, has his media-winning smile already molded to fit his face, that elusive mask that he began crafting when he was thirteen and perfected two years later. He's prepared to pull it from its home in his back pocket. The words come first.

"I wonder what it would have been like. If this were the other way around. If I hadn't-"

"Don't." Yuuri slips his hands into Viktor's like they belong there. They hold on and squeeze with a strength that Yuuri shouldn't have. "I wouldn't have wanted the burden. The obligation. The need to skate because I was living your life. Skating your dreams. I would have felt like I killed you, stolen your opportunities. Your world." Viktor squeezes Yuuri's hands back because that's just it. That's exactly how Viktor feels and Yuuri _understands_. He knows. The way Yakov doesn't. Or his friends. Or his therapist. Or the world.

"I wouldn't have been able to skate like you. I would have failed you."

Viktor's speechless, all words caught in a traffic jam in his throat. He should be telling Yuuri that he wouldn't have failed. That he can skate like Viktor and even better, skate like himself. Giving his entire being and all of his devotion and love and energy to his routines, flawed or not, showed his brilliance. With a little more time and training Yuuri would have had the gold, the glitz, the glamor. Yuuri's name would have been on everyone's lips. He would have had his own diehard fans with rooms full of posters. Fans that sent him letters of admiration and became international figure skating stars because he inspired them to strive for their dreams. Yuuri had the potential. So, so much.

"I'm glad it turned out this way."

"I'm not."

Yuuri's head snaps up from where he'd been speaking to his faded sneakers. Viktor stands and holds his hand out to Yuuri.

"Can you make an ice rink again? I would like to skate with my hero."

Yuuri's Adam's apple bobs with a long, grounding swallow. He doesn't blink, doesn't move, just stares in disbelief. "What?"

"It took me nearly dying to realize what skating meant to me, and I'm still having a hard time finding my old spark. But when I watch you, when I see you out on the ice, skating with your entire being, all passion and raging fire, I remember. I remember that need that drew me to the ice every day when I was younger. I remember that drive, that unstoppable will that kept me going even when my training clothes were soaked through with sweat and my muscles felt overstretched and I couldn't feel my bleeding toes anymore and I was smiling through gritted teeth. Every fall, every failed jump was met with laughter. I felt challenged, but I was going to win. I was going to breathe in the ice, the screams, the cheers and wear them like wings and soar. You helped me remember what skating is really about and the reason why I fell in love with it. You're my hero, Yuuri."

Viktor meets Yuuri's eyes and there are tears. Viktor kneels down and gently thumbs them from the curve of Yuuri's cheeks, following them back to where some have slithered back into his hair. Yuuri sniffs and takes the hand when Viktor offers it again. When they stand, their surroundings have already changed. They're in Hasetsu this time, on Yuuri's beloved home rink. If Viktor listens closely enough, he can hear the giggles of two children skating hand in hand.

Viktor knocks his blades against the ice, getting his feet and ankles accustomed to Yuuri's conjured skates. He smiles at the gold shining back at him. "So, Yuuri. Skate with me?"

Yuuri can only nod, visibly overcome, but when their hands join together, Viktor knows that this is right. It's too little, too late, but Viktor can be content with this. Skating hand in hand with Yuuri is more than a wish on a starry night sky coming true. It's happiness. It's hope. It's a miracle given to a man that spent too much time sitting on a snowy bench alone.

It's everything Viktor has never had and always longed for.

He's holding Yuuri close, guiding him through the steps of skating not as one, but as two, when the flashes come back.

The horn. The spinning. The blood.

They've stayed away from the topic, but it wrenches itself up and Viktor asks with a flick of his tongue, "What does death feel like?" He wants to swallow it back up, snatch back the way the question steals the wistfulness from Yuuri's face. There's a haunting dullness to his eyes and Viktor remembers, vividly, that Yuuri is dead. This little world that they have is perfect, a dream, a galaxy of their own making. But this is the only place that Yuuri will ever exist now. Here and in a grave.

Yuuri comes to an abrupt stop, blades shredding the ice into tiny crystals.

They shatter and scatter everywhere, cutting into him and he's bleeding.

Yuuri's heart pounds with the force of thunder that leaves tremors behind.

Viktor needs to stop.

Yuuri clenches his fists and Viktor can hear the fabric of his gloves being compressed, packed down with the strength of Yuuri's tightly contained distress. "I'd like to say that it was over quickly, that I didn't feel a thing. That it was a swift darkness, over like a warm caress, but… it hurt… a lot. The tearing of my skin and the breaking of bones. I could smell the driver burning, seared flesh. My blood was warm as it dribbled down into my eyes. I clung to that until… It wasn't warm anymore. I got cold fast, faster than I thought I would. I could hear people yelling, shouting. Saying they would get help. I guess they weren't fast enough."

Viktor regrets the question even more as he sleeps the next night. Viktor now knows what it's like to die a gruesomely young death. There's terror, and pain, gut-wrenching, vomit-inducing agony, and quiet acceptance ruminating above it all. He can't escape this. There's no way he's going to survive. Even if he does… he will never skate again.

He looks down at his wreck of a body. A mess of split skin and torn muscle. His knee is bent forwards, leg twisted up like a fish hook and he wants to scream. His body is so warped that he can't see his left arm, but he can feel the searing pain, the slice of bone through flesh as he tries to move. His neck throbs, stuck in a quarter rotation like he's glancing over his shoulder. It hurts to breathe, air dragging through his throat and scraping against his lungs.

He feels… everything.

All that Yuuri experienced.

But there's something that Yuuri didn't speak of.

Loneliness.

Viktor makes sure to cure the aftershocks of it the next time he visits Yuuri. He hugs him wordlessly, and feels like never letting go.

* * *

Viktor returns to the ice. He's only practicing, careful with the twists and turns of his body. No spins, no jumps. It's an agreement he's made with Yakov who stands off to the side, arms crossed and his grumpy, old man frown in place, like he's not just as excited to see Viktor back in form as Viktor is. There's a medical professional close. Viktor ignores the steady concern in her eyes.

Viktor drowns his surroundings out until there is just him and the ice. Alone again except he's not. In his mind's eye, Viktor can see Yuuri dancing with all of his heart right beside him, tucked carefully in a world where Viktor's new heart doesn't bind him to caution. Viktor slips into their dance without thought, his blades matching Yuuri's, arms out and sweeping Yuuri up off his feet. Yuuri's weight is tangible in his hands, it's like he's really there, chuckling through this newfound thrill even as his face is coated in worry that he's too heavy for Viktor.

Elation balloons up within Viktor and he feels ready to take off, drift right into the air and let out all of these brimming emotions. Viktor jumps, spinning too fast and turning at the wrong angle. He's lost in something that isn't there. He hits the ice, off balance on his blades and he falls.

The rink goes silent. Viktor can feel a million eyes even though there are only five other skaters present.

Then Yakov explodes. "Goddammit, Vitya! You twit! What was it about no jumps that you failed to comprehend? Were you even listening-"

Viktor lays where he's landed, cool ice grounding beneath his back. His ankle feels sore from how he's landed. He may have sprained his wrist protecting his head. But he feels giddy inside.

The only place Viktor feels at home is on the ice and with Yuuri in their little wonderland. Outside, the press is impossible, their questions like gunfire, a barrage he can't avoid when it's coming from all sides.

He doesn't know when he will be returning to competitions.

No, he hasn't been practicing a new routine.

He has no idea what his next theme will be.

He hasn't been paying attention to the competition, or how Yuri has begun to take flight.

His recovery has been going fine, he's healthier than ever.

That one may be a lie.

The questions about Yuuri make Viktor freeze. He feels fire in his blood. He's two seconds from snapping at the reporter when Yakov steps in. Viktor eases behind a back that used to be so broad, so colossal it was intimidating, then protective, a shield that took bullets and spat them back out. Now, that back is smaller, hunched, but no less of a shield than it was. Viktor feels tired, suddenly, and maybe skating this soon was a mistake. The faces of reporters blur and there's so many voices, it's like he's still on the ice. Is he still spinning?

Yakov's hand is a brace that keeps Viktor standing.

Outside of his closest, other skaters stay clear of him like he holds a bomb in his body that their close proximity can somehow set off. As if that bomb doesn't only have a blast radius of his chest. He isn't fragile. On the contrary, this new heart makes him stronger. It makes him better, damn near invincible.

* * *

Time isn't on Yuuri's side. Viktor finds him unmoving sometimes, laying in the sand like he's stranded. A beached whale that doesn't have the ability to find his way back to the ocean. To his home.

"I can't recreate what I can't remember," Yuuri finally says when the silence has begun to cat-scratch against Viktor's nerves. "The smell of the inn in the morning. The feel of fuzzy slippers on my feet." Yuuri wiggles his toes as if the action can summon forth the feeling. "I can imagine so many things, but the things that I should know and what I used to love are out of my reach."

Yuuri reaches his hand up, grasping for something that isn't there. The sunlight shutters through Yuuri's fingers. Viktor counts the bands of light across Yuuri's face, then the shadows. Viktor doesn't want to know how long Yuuri has been like this. How often.

The absence of things grows most apparent when Viktor really looks. Sometimes, there is no breeze caressing his face. The leaves of the trees move as if caught in the tide of wind, and the sound is still there, a faint whistling between branches, but the air itself does not move. It rains, but the water does not puddle on the pavement.

Yuuri is forgetting pieces of the world, leaving his surroundings incomplete.

On another visit Viktor feels like he's beneath the ocean. Jellyfish are all around him, Yuuri's favorite sea creature. They're all sizes and colors, brilliant and lifelike as they float on the current. Blue light shimmers around them, sunrays beaming down and shattering across the rocks under their feet. Sound is distorted like Viktor's head has been shoved beneath a pillow.

Viktor reaches up to grasp a stinger as it sways. There is no jolt of pain. Poison doesn't ripple through his bloodstream. He isn't left scarred and unable to breathe.

The jellyfish are as fake as the figures of a wax museum.

It brings on the thought of the trappings and trimmings of an aquarium. Walls polished with a glossy shine. Of plastic trees and a chest that moves in a regular pattern to bubble out air. The gravel is a pop of bright colors, distracting attention away from the captives above it.

Everything is artificial, a superficial world.

"You know what I miss?" Yuuri asks. They're on a boat in the middle of the ocean, bopping back and forth between waves beneath a lively sun. The water shimmers like oil as it cooks. "Books. I try to recreate them, but… All I remember are the highlights, the enthralling twists and turns, the endings. Not the intricate details, or the buildup of the plot or the deepening of a romance. Not the binding that keeps it all together."

Viktor feels the heat of the sun, but it doesn't burn. He doesn't need to wear sunglasses to face the light. "Isn't that like life? We only remember the big moments, the memorable times. Everything in between kind of… slips away."

This world has begun to lose its magic for Yuuri. His crown is rusting, crumbling into dust from its place on his head.

Somewhere inside, Viktor can hear a clock ticking.

* * *

Viktor has a pack of cigarettes he bought one night when he was on edge. He never smokes them, just lights them up when he's outside with Makkachin, watches the glow as it burns down to the filter, takes a small whiff of the grey smoke as it dances into the sky.

It's what he's doing now as he imagines Yuuri by the shore, his imagination spent as he lays alone.

"You better put that out before I smack it out of your hand."

Viktor is startled from his thoughts by a voice he recognizes. Makkachin jolts and Viktor feels her wriggling excitement through the leash. "Chris." The cigarette falls, remnants of Yuuri fading in its ashes.

Chris approaches from across the street, his old travel duffle slung over his shoulder. "Yakov called. If he thought that _I_ was needed, then you must be in dire straits." Viktor's smile is genuine, his own, and he accepts Chris' hug along with his complaints. "You smell like a dumpster fire."

"One you started, I'm sure."

"You can blame a lot of disasters on me. This," Chris says with a furrowed brow and a vague gesture at Viktor's person, "is not one of them."

Viktor deserves that. He looks not entirely how he feels, but it serves as a good reference. His hair is washed, but unstyled, hidden beneath a beanie that crinkles his hair at the edges. He's wearing his oldest trench coat because it's soft and worn in the right spots and it may be warm outside, but he's comfortable in a way he hasn't felt in months. He feels his lack of sleep in the deep trenches beneath his eyes.

Viktor leads their way back, unlocks the door. Chris strides in like he lives here. Viktor bends, unclipping Makkachin's harness. He feels a vague need to shuck his shoes and slip into slippers. He doesn't fight it. He has a pair of slippers by the door now, wears them whenever he's in the house. Viktor tries to memorize the feeling - burrowing his toes in warmth, the padded cushion that bounces his steps, the softness that relaxes him – in the hope that he can bring it back with him to Yuuri.

If Chris notices the new quirk, he doesn't say anything.

Much of the first night is spent gabbing, talking on about meaningless drivel. Chris occasionally pauses, smirking at his phone. He and Mila are hate-tweeting each other. It's riotous as ever, because it always is. It will be all heart eyes and disgusting innuendos the next day before it devolves into a gif war. They enjoy getting the tabloids going. Chris nurses his wine and swerves easily back into conversation. Viktor sips from his water like he's a good little organ recipient.

When the topic comes - and it comes, Viktor has expected it - it's easier than he thought it would be. Chris has always been an easy person to talk to. He knows how to get on a person's good side and worms his way in. He's also his best friend, and Viktor is about as loose-lipped as he ever gets when Chris is around.

But it's not just that.

Chris knew Yuuri.

"He was a sweet kid who had a big heart," Chris chuckles and pours himself another drink. He squints through his glass, like he's seeing through a tinted window. "He had a lot of potential, but it was crippled by doubt and self-loathing."

And Chris is… more receptive to Viktor's worries than most.

"It's like he's… inside of you," Chris parrots. Viktor nods, ready to validate his claims with more examples, but Chris continues. "Like you're possessed? I didn't know you were into that kind of stuff."

Viktor makes a curt noise in his throat, half offended, half amused. "Yes, Chris, I go to palm readings regularly every Sunday."

Chris looks at him carefully, studying Viktor with his eyes. It's an appraisal that Viktor hasn't felt from the other man since they met. "There's a theory, you know? It's one of the things I came across when I was looking into your organ transplant. Its basic idea is that the body retains its own memories. There have been cases of organ recipients claiming that they can remember things about the donor they never met, like the organ they received brought with it tiny fragments of its owner. I mean, that makes sense. You could be absorbing Yuuri's memories, his bad eyesight, his anxiety, all of the things his heart remembers."

Viktor wrinkles his nose, fingers twittering with the placemat in front of him. That's not what's happening. It can't be what's happening. Yuuri is inside of him. It's not just remnants of Yuuri or a life of memories. It's Yuuri. Viktor doesn't know how to explain it. "There's this entire world inside of me. That's where Yuuri lives."

Chris doesn't believe him. His head tilts back skeptically, sympathy in his eyes like Viktor's going nuts.

"Yuuri," Chris starts, testing his thoughts out on his tongue.

Viktor doesn't hear him finish. He blinks and when he opens his eyes, he's standing on a beach. He's inside of Yuuri's world, but Yuuri is nowhere in sight. Viktor tries not to worry, but Yuuri is supposed to be here. He's always here. But he's not. He's not off in the distance, not laying beneath a blanket of darkness in his room. Viktor doesn't understand. He walks. He trudges through the sand and yells and cries and screams out Yuuri's name until he goes hoarse and sand crunches between his teeth.

 _Maybe the time came. Maybe Yuuri has… moved on._

Viktor sinks to his knees. He curls in on himself, forehead to the ground and waits to sink, to be buried. This world is meaningless without Yuuri. Just sand and water and empty air.

Just a heart that pumps blood. That keeps him alive.

Viktor blinks.

He's back at his table, across from Chris. There's a loud, unhinged sniff. It draws Viktor's attention back to his friend. Chris' hand is over his mouth, half-covering his face that is cracked open with grief. His wine glass has fallen over, crystal liquid drooling into the placemat.

"What happened?"

Chris sucks in a breath. He tries to speak. He's successful on the third gasp. "I think I just spoke with Yuuri."


	4. Chapter 4

"You want me to take over?" Yuuri asks, but he's still hiding himself. His body is tucked into itself on the corner of his bed, like a dog that curls itself small to avoid being scolded. "I don't-" Yuuri sniffs, unable to finish.

This is where Viktor found him, hiding away, guilt in his face like he's done something he shouldn't have, snuck a peek beneath the blindfold that is this world. _"It just happened,"_ Yuuri said, and Viktor believes him. It just happened. Like Viktor coming here. Like Yuuri coming here. Like the accident that brought them closer together yet wrenched them farther apart like two dead stars in the sky.

Yuuri just popped into Viktor's consciousness, started talking to Chris before he realized what had happened. Viktor doesn't understand it, but he gets it and it's given him this idea. This crazy, insane, completely possible idea that Viktor can't let go of. It solves everything. They can switch. Yuuri can spend part of his time out in the real world while Viktor spends time here. It's perfect. Viktor doesn't know why he didn't think of it before.

Viktor wants this for Yuuri. More than anything else. He can't stand to see Yuuri so despondent, so listless anymore. It's like looking into a mirror and Viktor wants to smash it into glittering bits. Yuuri deserves to be happy. He deserves to be alive.

Viktor would trade places with Yuuri in a millisecond if he could. This way, he can.

Yuuri is understandably hesitant. He's scared, balled up, teeth chewing on stretched-out sleeves. Viktor kneels in front of Yuuri on the bed, smiles at the creak of the mattress beneath his weight. Some things haven't left Yuuri yet. "You can do this, Yuuri. Just like with Chris. Just…" Viktor pauses, draws his tongue across his lips as he formulates words, "be me for a little while."

"Are you hearing yourself?" Yuuri asks, and there's the Yuuri that Viktor knows, staring at him like he's a moron speaking nonsense. "I can't 'be you'! That's ridiculous. You're-"

"Viktor Nikiforov. Yeah, I can't forget."

"So why would you even suggest it?"

"Because this is your chance, Yuuri." And Viktor grabs for him, holds his clammy, half-hidden hands in his. "You can-" The word sticks in Viktor's throat and it's like Viktor is swallowing razorblades, thin metal cutting and tearing, "live," Viktor finishes, but it feels wrong. Yuuri is alive already. He's in Viktor's hands. He's tearing up and shaking because this all feels impossible.

"I'm dead, Viktor." Yuuri says it as if he's reading it from a book. Reciting a fact. A definition next to his name.

"This is a way for you to live again." Yuuri shakes his head. Viktor stops him, holds Yuuri's cheeks tenderly and tells his hands to remember the feeling. The roundness, the warm skin damp with tears, soft and perfect.

He should return this spirit, this beautiful, beautiful person, back to the world. It's what he's trying to do in the only way he knows how.

"Do what you want, Yuuri. Live it up like you're _the_ Viktor Nikiforov. Tour through my house, ogle my medals, and even ogle my body. I won't mind." He winks and Yuuri lets out an uneasy whine in his throat as he squeezes his eyes shut.

"Do you really have to go there?"

Viktor waits until Yuuri opens his eyes again. He meets Yuuri's gaze with all of the assurance he can muster. Viktor will be Yuuri's courage when his own fails him. "Visit your family, read a book, _skate_. Just breathe the air." Viktor's thumbs move in little circles and he hopes that it's soothing. It's soothing for him, Yuuri's skin beneath his hands. Here with him. "Be you while being me."

* * *

They switch out. Yuuri gets to see and experience the world through Viktor's eyes. They both get to spend time together in this space in between. Until Viktor dies, it's how they live.

At least, that's what Viktor hopes for.

Viktor guides Yuuri through the process of waking. They're both unsure, both grasping at each other, holding on because this is terrifying. Viktor wants Yuuri to go, he wants Yuuri to experience _life_ again, but he also wants Yuuri by his side. He never wants Yuuri to leave him.

Viktor tells Yuuri to focus his thoughts, to think of the outside world, to envision living and breathing down to the last detail.

Viktor has to tell himself to stay calm as Yuuri begins to disappear. _This is what I want_ , he thinks, even as a cold sweat develops down his spine. He tells himself that Yuuri will be back. Yuuri's form gradually leaves him, Yuuri's hands fading from his. He tells himself that Yuuri isn't fading for good.

He's not dying.

Then it's just him. Viktor can't help but whine at the loss.

He waits. He sits and waits, remembering what it's like to feel alone. It's a loss that feels like a scar, heavy and visible, but faded. He can't feel it anymore, there is no pain, but the mark is there. Always there. A reminder in his skin. In his bones.

Viktor stares at the scar on his chest. It marks him to Yuuri and Viktor has to remind himself that Yuuri is still with him. Still somehow beating in his chest beneath a wind of reddened skin.

Yuuri runs straight into his arms when he returns. " _Thank you_ ," Yuuri says into his chest, a whisper that feels like a butterfly kiss to his heart. And then Yuuri is actually kissing him, all heat and warmth and desperate gratitude. There's something else there, beneath it all, something that always was and never will be.

Viktor doesn't let Yuuri stop. He kisses back like he's drowning, gasping for air and breathing in Yuuri instead. He holds Yuuri's hands, brings them to his chest and keeps them there until they break away. They gasp into the space between, breathless and lightheaded. Yuuri rests his forehead against Viktor's. They stay like that for what feels like forever.

"I met Makkachin," Yuuri starts, and he's giddy like he spent hours cuddling Makkachin's cheeks. Viktor knows what that feels like. It's a healing heaven that has stolen away the heaviest aches. Yuuri continues, all about Viktor's house, his things. How he wanted to burn his letters, but refrained. How he was so embarrassed to find out that Viktor had gone to sleep naked before switching. "I didn't look," Yuuri emphasizes, and Viktor laughs.

Seriousness draws Yuuri's face down when he says that he didn't leave the house. He couldn't.

"I don't know how to face the world as anyone but me," Yuuri says. "I don't know how to be you."

"You'll learn."

"But," Yuuri stutters mildly, stumbling over consonants and syllables that ghost over his tongue, "H-how can you do this? How can you sacrifice yourself for me?"

Sacrificing himself? He's not. There wasn't really anything to sacrifice.

Yuuri sniffs like he's holding back his emotions. Yuuri is a very emotional person.

Viktor isn't.

"That's not true," Yuuri insists, but Viktor knows himself. His emotions were blunted long ago, or maybe he simply wasn't born with them. "You have beautiful, transformative emotions. Sure, you have a rough time expressing yourself earnestly-"

"Easy there, Yuuri."

"-but they're in your programs." Yuuri turns away from Viktor. He holds out his hand and off in the distance is another rink. In the middle is a version of Viktor, skating away like he used to, shining from the inside out, gold in his skates only, when he was young and new and wild. He was a comet, a brilliant light that took the world and left only craters behind. Nothing stopped him. "In your smile. That one." Yuuri traces a finger across Viktor's lips. It makes every fiber in Viktor's being shake. "Right there."

"This smile, Yuuri, is all you," Viktor punctuates his sentence with a poke to Yuuri's nose.

It gets easier, sitting and waiting. Waiting for Yuuri. He can create when he is alone. This world becomes his once Yuuri is gone, the crown passed to him when Yuuri leaves. He puts his imagination to the test, stretches his mind to the limits as he creates mountains and skyscrapers. Tears the world apart and stitches it back together. Sprinkles the land with color and takes it all away, makes everything monochrome.

When Yuuri takes his time, Viktor tries to craft a companion. He makes another Makkachin. She has her likeness, a wagging tail, wriggling excitement, a wandering, wistful nose, but she's lifeless like a puppet. She moves, smells, breathes because Viktor tells her to. She disappears, because Viktor can't take it anymore.

Beneath all of the wonderment, the breadth of possibility that is the imagination, this place is hollow. Vast nothingness compact in Viktor's body. Without Yuuri, it is painfully clear what Viktor is. A desert waiting for rain to give it grass and flowers. A wasteland waiting for a spark of love to bring it to life. Yuuri makes him whole.

Yuuri comes back drained after seeing his family. They sit together in a field of grass beneath an overcast sky. Yuuri is in his lap, clinging to him and trying to breathe. Yuuri hasn't said a word since he came back. He bowled into Viktor and held on as Viktor fell. Viktor has asked him if he's okay, what's happened, how he can help, but he's gotten nothing but quiet, suffering breaths. When Yuuri finally speaks it hits Viktor like a well-aimed baseball to the throat.

"I don't… to die… I don't want to die… I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. It's not fair! I-" Yuuri breaks down, huffing out loud, wailing cries into Viktor's clavicle. Hot tears drip down Viktor's shirt and Yuuri's hands are balled up against him so tight it hurts. But Viktor holds him. He can't stop himself from crying, too.

"Vicchan knew. He knew it was me at the door- And- And Mari, she hugged me and I- I was… But mom and dad, they didn't know what was going on and they thought I was you and… But they believed me. Th-They actually bel-believed me and Mari and Vicchan and it was-" Yuuri draws in a hefty sniff and with it goes the tears. He's smiling as he looks at Viktor. "I missed them."

Viktor hates himself.

He's so happy for Yuuri that he can't reply. He hugs Yuuri back into his chest, falls back and lays there with him like they're a part of the grass, just two of the millions of blades, dew-covered and smelling like outside.

Viktor hates himself because he's so happy, but his heart hurts. He doesn't want Yuuri to leave him anymore. He doesn't want Yuuri to live without him.

"I don't want to be dead," Yuuri says, an afterthought that comes with a last hiccup.

Viktor is selfish.

Viktor wakes at Yu-topia when he resurfaces. Yuuri's heart still pangs painfully and it only hurts more when he has to face this family, _Yuuri's_ family, and tell them that it's him, just Viktor, not their son. Yuuri's still dead. Still trapped in a world that nobody understands or knows exists.

Some of the heartbreak must show on Viktor's face because he feels the assuaging weight of a hand on his back. It rubs between his shoulder blades and Viktor knows this feeling.

Yuuri knows this feeling.

It's Yuuri's father, patting his back, looking at him like he understands. But he can't. How can he? Why would he show compassion to the man that stole his son's life? To the man that is here instead of his son? To the man that keeps his son imprisoned inside of him?

Then there are arms around him. Strong, motherly arms hold his pieces together just when he's ready to crack. Hiroko speaks, in the clearest English she can manage, and says "Thank you for taking care of our Yuuri."

It's too much. This is Yuuri's mother, not his. Viktor is standing in the spot that is Yuuri's, surrounded by Yuuri's family. He feels like a place holder.

He feels like a thief.

He hugs back.

* * *

 _"I don't want to die."_

Viktor can't get it out of his ears. It's there, mingling with his earwax and it stubbornly clings to him even as he gouges into his ears with cotton swabs.

 _"I don't want to die."_

Viktor isn't known for emotional outbursts. He isn't, but he's in the middle of one. He's demolishing his house, going from one room to the next, meticulously, almost obsessively destroying everything. Everything but Makka and Yuuri's letters, his most precious things. He won't touch those. They're in his room where Makkachin is whining as glass breaks and eggs splat against windows and the shredding of curtains tear through the air. In his rage he slams a cabinet door and it flies back at him wildly, hitting his face and tearing his lip. There's blood in his mouth. Viktor makes sure to get the door back by slamming it until it flies off its hinges. He breaks it and everything around it until his house looks like Yuuri's heart, bent and broken and rusting.

He's not sure if this is Yuuri or if he's finally had enough or what but Viktor isn't known for emotional outbursts. He tells himself that as his skate flies through the window.

"Did you redecorate?" Yuuri asks after he's come back. After they've switched again and Viktor has allowed enough time for his lip to heal.

Viktor cleaned the house after his tirade, cleaned until his hands were dry and patchy and the house sparkled, but of course Yuuri would notice. "Nope. Just got rid of what was unimportant." He gives Yuuri one of his brightest smiles, though he knows that he's showing too many teeth. Yuuri knows, too.

He doesn't deserve to feel this way. This is Yuuri's pain. But Viktor hoards it, takes it into himself and makes it his.

Because Viktor is selfish.

* * *

"I feel like my life only began after I died."

They're holding hands as they walk down a street this time, a carefully crafted street that Yuuri takes from his recent visit back home. It's like Yuuri's guiding him through his hometown and the sentiment turns Viktor to mush. Viktor swings their hands between them like he's an excited, overactive child that can't wait to reach the park.

"I feel like my life only began after I met you," Viktor responds without thinking.

Yuuri didn't expect that. The shock reverberates across his face as his lips peel open and his eyes grow spaceship-sized.

Viktor doesn't let Yuuri reply. "You know what I want? More than anything?" Viktor grabs Yuuri by the waist, holds him, back to chest, chin resting on Yuuri's shoulder as he gazes out at the world in front of them. There's a space between houses, an open lot of untamed grass trapped by a weathered, wooden fence that pokes out of the ground like broken teeth.

Yuuri gives Viktor a look, but indulges him with a little shrug of his shoulders that bobs Viktor with the movement. Yuuri thinks in that adorable way that Viktor loves. His tongue pokes out between his lips as his hand clips onto his chin. He gives up with a shake of his head.

"A home. With you." It's a confession that lands like a blow that swipes the bemusement from Yuuri's cheeks. "So let's make one."

They do, carefully and slowly. Their words build a house on this lot that has been empty since Yuuri was small. They trim the grass, make it green, spot it with flowers that have no business being in Japan. They build the foundation, make the house a modest one story with doors and windows and a smoking chimney on top. They give it a porch as they run inside to decorate the interior. Nothing goes undone. Even the trimming is styled, curtains up and fire alarms placed. Viktor snorts, because only Yuuri would worry about fire alarms in an imaginary house, but there they are, blinking in regular intervals to let them know that they work.

The house is a combination of them, of Yuuri and Viktor, what they know and like, as well as what they've always wanted. It feels awfully domestic as they fight about paint colors and splotch the walls with alternating ideas. Viktor loves it and keeps arguing just so it will never end.

They settle on an off blue for most of the house. It's not like they can't change it on a whim later.

"It's like we live right down the street from Yu-topia," Yuuri says with a clap when the place has finally come together, lit up with a streetlamp out front. The sign says Nikiforov-Katsuki and Viktor can't stop grinning. "It's gotta have a yellow fence." In a swirl of mist, the dingy, grey fence pops to life as it takes on the color of marigolds, new planks slotting into missing spaces.

"Why yellow?"

"Is there something wrong with yellow?" Yuuri asks, suddenly concerned. "We can make it something else." Viktor nuzzles his nose against Yuuri. Yuuri protests with a "That tickles," as he pushes Viktor away.

"Nothing wrong with yellow." Viktor steps back. He looks over the house, _their_ house, and thinks that this is what happiness looks like. "It's perfect."

"I think I'm falling in love with you."

"Good," Viktor says, an arm around Yuuri's shoulders as he ghosts his nose around the spiral of Yuuri's ear. "Because I've already fallen in love with you."

* * *

"I can't believe I'm speaking Russian. I mean I _understand_ it and I'm speaking it. I really don't get how all of this works, but… It's so weird."

"Imagine how I felt when I would accidentally speak your language."

"Yeah, that would be pretty freaky."

Yuuri's sitting on the couch, cuddled with Viktor who's laying on his back, head in Yuuri's lap as Yuuri pets through Viktor's hair. Viktor yawns and stretches out, practically purring like a cat being scratched in all the right places.

It's pouring outside. Viktor's eyes are closed as he listens to the sounds above him. Viktor had wondered why Yuuri put a skylight in the ceiling over the couch but now he knows. Yuuri has talked about how the sound of rain calms him. It's a soothing sound, the pitter patter of droplets as they shatter and splash across glass. The mid-morning light glosses over them, makes the room feel foggy and ethereal.

It's like a spring rain. Viktor thinks of glistening flowers and the chirping of birds, of a world not like this one, yet almost identical. They would end up like this, together in their home. Their own little slice of heaven.

If Yuuri was alive.

Yuuri would greet the neighbors during morning runs. He would know them all by name.

They would have Yuuri's parents over for dinner on nights when the inn wasn't busy. Hiroko would offer her assistance and Viktor would gladly accept. He would make Yuuri's favorite, learn the ins and outs of the recipe from the woman who has always been its master.

Yuuri would sit scrunched up in the windowed nook in the corner, reading the books from the tall shelves that surround him. Viktor would doze on the couch, listening to Yuuri read aloud.

Yuuri and Yuuko would catch up on the sofa. Viktor would watch them giggle like the kids they once were.

Makkachin and Vicchan would be best friends, siblings.

Viktor and Yuuri would practice at Ice Castle.

They would spend time in St Petersburg. Yuuri would meet his rink mates.

They would skate together every day. They would compete side by side. Viktor would kiss Yuuri, up on the podium, in front of everyone from his place on top, or maybe from his place below. Yuri would make the most wretched choking noises and Viktor would laugh at Yuuri's combusting face.

But that will always just be a dream.

A clock is still ticking.

The unknown is a predator. It prowls in the outskirts of their home. Inside of Viktor's body.

Viktor ignores it.

"I'm more surprised," Viktor says as he nuzzles his face into the cushion of Yuuri's thigh, "that you were talking to Yakov. He's definitely the intimidating type."

Viktor feels Yuuri shudder beneath him. "That went as well as you expect. I cowered, and cowered more when he asked me why I was cowering."

"He probably thought I was just being weird. It's been the trend lately."

"I don't know how I'm supposed to skate in front of him. I can try to act like you all I want, but I can't hope to pretend to skate like you." Viktor pouts when Yuuri's hand leaves his hair. He watches it wave about in the air as Yuuri talks. "I don't skate anywhere near your level."

"Of course you do. We were going to skate at the same competition, remember?"

"Who knows how that happened?"

"Yuuri." Viktor abruptly cuts across them, snatching Yuuri's hand and putting it back on his head. Yuuri smirks and obligingly goes back to combing through silver strands. "You were worthy of your spot. Don't tell yourself otherwise. I would have been honored to skate at the same event as you. You can't overthink this."

"It's hard, Viktor," Yuuri scolds like Viktor doesn't know, couldn't possibly understand. And maybe he doesn't. He doesn't know what it's like to skate with Yuuri's worries. He doesn't know what it's like to live with anxiety as a crushing weight on his self-esteem and confidence. But he's seen Yuuri soar through it. He knows how Yuuri can dazzle despite it.

"Don't try to skate like me. Just skate like yourself, only ever yourself. And I'll help you. We can practice here, get you ready for harder jumps and put together a routine that will shock even my fans. I'll talk to Yakov, tell him I'm going through… something, it will be fine." Viktor wipes away the disbelief from Yuuri's brow with the caress of his hand. "I'll have him clear the ice for my practice time. Everyone else can be barred from my practices. It won't be the first time I've made such a request." Such selfishness isn't uncharacteristic of him. On the contrary, it's expected, but Viktor could care less about the gossip mill. With one word to Mila, Viktor could have it turn any way he wants.

Viktor wants this for Yuuri. It's where Yuuri belongs, out on the ice where Yuuri found his true passion. Where Yuuri first found Viktor.

Where everything started.

Yuuri is an artist and the ice is his medium. The ice is where Yuuri lets out every pent up emotion. It's where every creative cell in his body is set free in bounds and flashy steps. It's where every second of every day is sacrificed for just a few minutes in front of millions of eyes. Viktor can see Yuuri skating, freed from this cage inside of Viktor's body and sweeping across the ice with all of the majesty he's always had.

Viktor's just sad that he won't be able to see Yuuri do it, or be with him through it all.

Except he will. Inside of his body, mingling with Yuuri's spirit.

Viktor is brought back home by a searing peck of Yuuri's lips. He's on their couch, beneath a rain-soaked skylight, with Yuuri's hands in his hair. "I can't ask so much of you," Yuuri says, whispering into Viktor's mouth.

Viktor arches his neck up to kiss back. "You're not."

* * *

"Bring your arms in tighter when you twist, Yuur-"

Yuuri's takeoff is uneven, unsure. It causes him to twist too much too soon, spiraling wildly until he falls. Yuuri hisses as he slides across the ice. Viktor can feel the skid marks, the bruises that would speckle beneath Yuuri's practice clothes. If he were alive. But Yuuri is already up before Viktor makes it over to him. There's frustration in the twitch of his cheeks, but his jaw is set, body ready for another go. The scrapes and gouges in the ice seal over. Viktor grins. Yuuri is eager and willing. He knows he's going to fall, and fall and fall, as he readies to make this jump. He's going to keep trying until he puts the physics in motion.

"Fast, Yuuri. Pick up your momentum and propel yourself up from your toe pick. Watch your ankle. It's easy to twist with the wrong part of your body in the heat of the moment. Make those revolutions, then we'll worry about you landing your jump."

Yuuri nods and goes for it again.

He falls. And he falls. Eventually, he'll make it, Viktor knows, but this is only one part of the battle. Yuuri will have to learn to do this out in the real world, with real pain and real gravitational forces. He'll have to do it in Viktor's body, with Viktor's height and weight. He won't have Viktor there to coach him through his falls.

It's going to wreak havoc on Viktor's body.

Viktor isn't worried about giving Yuuri his body. He's prepared for the soreness, the bruising, the aches, the muscle spasms and even the blood. He's spent years putting himself through the trauma of pushing himself past his limits. What Viktor worries over is Yuuri's heart.

 _Yuuri will be fine_ , Viktor tells himself. It's Yuuri's heart, after all. Who better to handle it than Yuuri?

* * *

It takes much convincing, over hours and days and the bribery of kisses, but Viktor manages to get Yuuri to agree to compete. He's going to skate in the Grand Prix Final, like he was always meant to.

It doesn't matter if it's Viktor's body, his name. It's Yuuri's soul, his consciousness.

Viktor wishes that he can be there with him, that this really is a do over, and they can compete against each other, skate with each other.

But Viktor resigns himself to the wait. He clenches his hands together, holding them to his mouth and sits as his feet beat a rhythm into their living room floor.

Yuuri earns third place with his short program. He fell, a couple of times, he admits, downtrodden as he trudges in, his hand rubbing his arm. Viktor's brain cringes, because Viktor Nikiforov doesn't do third, hasn't fallen during a competition in who knows how long. But this isn't Viktor, not really. This is a victory for Yuuri. Viktor runs to him, picks him up and spins him. He kisses him congratulations, and then puts his admonishing coach face in play as they spend the evening readying Yuuri for his free skate.

The wait this time is worse, so much worse, and Viktor can't stand it. He can't just sit and pray and wish and hope. So he visualizes, tries to put himself there.

The milky ice is spread out before him like wax paper. Other skater's hopes and efforts are etched and marked, left behind as testimony to the fighting spirits of the greatest skaters in the world. Yuuri stands in the middle of it all.

The ice siphons the world away just as it enhances it, makes every camera flash feel like fireworks sparking and the fans' screams bring with them echoes of the past. Words are not heard, but weighted onto his being and turned into fuel that propels him forward. The announcer is both an ally and an enemy. A watchful eye that encourages him to win yet waits for him to lose.

Yuuri will wait for the music, his soul exposed just as much as his body in a costume shrink-wrapped to his skin. His nerves are raw wires exposed that skip and jump with volts upon volts of electricity. Yuuri tries to keep them maintained. His fingers are tight against his gloves, teeth digging into the cushion of his lip. His gaze doesn't meet the crowd. His eyes see only the ice. His ears hear only Viktor.

Viktor likes to think that Yuuri imagines another Viktor there, off on the sidelines. A coach behind the boards that is right there with him, mouthing that Yuuri can do this. It's not Yakov, Viktor's coach, but Viktor, Yuuri's coach.

The music starts. Yuuri is ready. The frayed ends of his nerves are clipped from him and smoothed out into fierce power. Notes dance through the air, setting Yuuri's spirit on fire until he explodes into movement. He's bright and dazzling, his own shooting star.

The crowd is captivated, every person sitting in the cold frost, waiting just to make a wish on this beam of light.

Viktor thinks he can see it clearly now. Everything through Yuuri's eyes. He doesn't doubt it. Somehow, he's there with him.

A hush thrills through the crowd as Yuuri goes up for another jump, his rotations a blur of spinning centrifugal force, of whipping air too fast to feel, but he's already numb to everything but the tightening of his muscles as they bunch and relax as he makes it. Yuuri doesn't have time to celebrate, to cry and fall to his knees and kiss the ice, because he's up again, crossing through a triple salchow before he's jumping and spinning through the air once, twice, three, four times and he's back, floating across the ice and skating towards the middle.

Viktor is so proud. He's ready to throw himself at Yuuri. To kiss him and love him, but he's back in their little world. Viktor feels a crawling sensation. It creeps along his skin like vines up a spire. He knows something is wrong, but what can he do from here? How can he shield? Protect?

Viktor thinks of Yakov. A strong back in his face.

He thinks of Yuuri. Yuuri's fingers laced in his hair, woven, like they belong there.

 _"I think I'm falling in love with you."_

There's a sudden pain in his chest, like Yuuri's heart is being beaten and broken and shattering and-

Viktor grabs his chest. His fingers grope into his shirt, claw against the red line that feels as if it's being ripped back open.

Images flash across his vision like he's seeing out the window of a speeding car.

The rink. Faraway faces. Stretching and bending. All distorted and terrifying.

Yuuri. Every smile. Every tear. Moments of Yuuri's life.

Viktor tries to focus, tries to remain.

The world falls away from him. Their little home crumbles. Viktor can't let it happen, knows he has to protect it, somehow. He tries to run towards it. He yells at his legs to move, but he's stuck, slipping in quicksand.

The despair is crippling as Viktor watches everything they built collapse and fold into itself. The pebbles that are left disintegrate into nothingness until that is all that is left.

Just him in a world of absolute nothing.

Viktor wakes up as he crashes into the ice, gasping blood and watching red blossom and bloom between fresh cracks. There are flashes of cameras and screams and silence. Such eerie, irrepressible silence that Viktor thinks he will remember for the rest of his life.

The same silence he heard when staring at the moon, bleeding and wrapped around a seatbelt.

The smell of something putrid lies under his nose. He coughs and he startles as he realizes that it's his own vomit splatting on the ice, dripping from his chin. Yellow and red and vile.

Viktor feels cold. Icy tendrils slip into his skin like the ice is grabbing him, sucking him in and freezing him solid. He can't breathe.

Viktor is conscious for only seconds more. He watches people scramble for him. Faces upon faces. Spinning and swirling. Colors bleed together like a watercolor melting beneath the sun.

The unknown is a predator. It watches. It waits.

It pounces.

* * *

Viktor wakes to the sterile, white room that he likens to hell. There's a mask on his face. He has to glance around this blue-hued muzzle that forces oxygen down his throat. Yakov is in a gown. He stands stiff in the corner of the room as he talks to Viktor's surgeon. His coach's frown is apparent even from behind a surgical mask.

Wait.

Viktor is in the hospital.

He's in the ICU.

What happened?

Where is Yuuri?

The car accident is frighteningly vivid in Viktor's mind. The screech of tires. The crash of glass. The moon and its swallowing glow.

A fading question.

 _Where am I?_

But the accident was so long ago. Wasn't it? He's recovered. He's spent his time with Yuuri in a world that exists as much as it doesn't.

A thought squirms in his mind, a maggot clearing infection. Clearing out inconsistencies that Viktor doesn't want to face.

What if he's only just woken up? What if none of it happened? What if Yuuri-

 _No, he's fine_ , Viktor thinks, but he tries to remember his recovery, his time with Yuuri, where he was when everything came crashing down around him.

It's all a blank.

Viktor panics.

He struggles in his bed like a madman bound in an electric chair. His vision blurs with the onset of hysteria, full of mosaic pieces, jumbled and translucent. He chokes. He can't breathe this air that is not his own.

Yakov is next to him, holding him, shaking him. He's telling him to calm down. He's yelling and oh, god, he's crying. Yakov doesn't cry. Not since that one winter night when he sat with a glass of whiskey as Lilia had stormed out and Viktor watched the slamming of the door strike with something final.

Viktor's skin feels hot, scorched like he's been on a boat in the sun too long. He's burning and blistering but Yuuri doesn't-

Yakov is pulled from him as masked faces swarm Viktor's peripheries. He can still hear Yakov yelling.

"Stop, Vitya. Please, you have got to-"

But he can't stop. He can't face this.

He won't accept this.

That everything was just a dream.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I want to thank everyone that gave this fic a chance. I wouldn't have had it in me to keep posting if it weren't for the lovely words and the upset screams of my readers. You guys are all so awesome. Thank you to everyone who read and commented and reviewed and reblogged on tumblr. This bang has been fun and I've enjoyed every minute of it.**

 **Baph, you are the best partner and this fic wouldn't be half as good as it is without your art. I hope to see much, much more of your art on tumblr and maybe we'll work on something else in the future. Far in the future, because I know you're suuuuuper booked up and I've taken you away from other people with this. You deserve all the attention and praise.**

 **MAKE SURE YA'LL GO SEE BAPH'S ART FOR THIS. It is gorgeous. It's embedded on the AO3 version of this fic (stupid fanfiction not allowing images or links) and there are links on my tumblr.**

 **So, guys. This is the end. Thanks again and hope you enjoy! Maybe I'll see you again on another story of mine. Don't be afraid to leave a comment or go yell at me on tumblr. I love hearing from you!**

* * *

His chest feels heavy when he wakes up. His tongue is numb, thick in his mouth. His vision is fuzzed.

He's not wearing his glasses again.

No, he never wore glasses.

The thought halts him. It chases the shadows out of his chest and the blurriness from his mind. Yuuri is still there. Still infecting his thoughts. Still a miracle inside of him.

It wasn't all a dream.

Yuuri is with him.

Yakov is next to him, worry in his eyes as he stares at his folded hands in his lap. He hasn't slept, his cheeks heavy and his eyelids wrinkled like walnut shells. Viktor wonders how much time has passed. How long has he been out? How long has Yakov spent at his bedside? How long has Yuuri waited for him to come back?

The surgeon talks to Viktor for a very long time. His tone is admonishing, like Viktor is a child that wandered away in the supermarket. Viktor ignores the instinct to fiddle with his bangs.

Viktor experienced a rejection episode. They knew it could happen. Especially with him reentering competitions. He has got to be more cautious and attentive to his body, his doctor emphasizes. If something like this happens again, he could lose this heart. He would be put on the donor list, have to receive yet another new heart.

Someone else's heart.

The idea gnaws its way into Viktor's stomach and he tastes acid in his throat. He could lose Yuuri. His magical place. His new home.

Viktor would rather die than receive another heart. He can't live without Yuuri, not now. Not after everything they've built together. Not after falling in love with him.

Viktor can't help but imagine what it would be like. It leaves a bad aftertaste, sticks in his throat and makes him choke. He never realized how easily he could lose his heart. Lose Yuuri. Twice, only now Viktor knows what he's losing.

It can't happen. Viktor won't let it. He would do anything to protect his new heart.

The room is quiet after the surgeon leaves. His retreating footsteps leave only the beeps of other patient's monitors, the mechanical sighs of their breathing machines, and the heavy breathing of Viktor's coach.

The tone is notably different than the first time he awoke in the ICU. There are no smiling faces of his rink mates. No relieved tears or careful hugs. Yakov doesn't yell at him, but his gaze is twice as reproachful.

"You were calling out his name," Yakov grumbles, staring at Viktor' chest like it's broken. Viktor's incision site is visible, running from his breastbone all the way down to his naval. Yakov's gaze stabs into it, resentful. Then he's looking at Viktor with that same hardened look like Viktor has crossed a line again. "It's just an organ now. There is no more Katsuki Yuuri."

The chair beneath him creaks, screeches against the floor as he rises. Yakov follows the doctor's path out. Viktor waits until he's alone.

He runs his fingers down the angry red line that splits his chest. One half Viktor, one half Yuuri. His fingers grip into his chest, over the heart that races like it knows. Like it's responding.

"Please don't leave me, Yuuri. I can't be alone again."

* * *

Viktor has been afraid to see him, to see the damage that has been done to Yuuri. To see what Yuuri looks like now that he's been left alone for so long again.

He's twice as scared that Yuuri won't be there. That this 'rejection episode' has stolen Yuuri away from him. Viktor is afraid that it's foretelling of how Yuuri's heart is failing. That it really is dying inside of him, and so is Yuuri.

But Yuuri is here. And so is the beach and the starry sky and their house. Their perfect life is still here. His happiness.

Viktor crushes Yuuri in a hug. He pulls him in, one hand brushing through his hair while the other feels along his back, across shoulder blades, down his spine and rests definitively on Yuuri's hip. Viktor isn't satisfied until he knows that all of Yuuri is present, safe beneath his hands.

"I was so scared. I thought I hurt you," Yuuri voices Viktor's thoughts, eyes an x-ray that scopes out Viktor's body, like he can find and heal any new ailment that he may have inflicted, even if they're in a world where things such as ailments don't exist. His hands feel along Viktor's jaw line, thumb smearing his lip and fingers trailing his cheekbones. The gesture and Yuuri's terrified face pull Viktor in. He kisses Yuuri, holding him like he can pin him there, a keepsake that Viktor can have and hold onto forever.

"Did you see?" Viktor's question is a little too desperate, a touch too insistent.

Concern tugs at Yuuri's lips. He frowns, shaking his head. "It was all just… blank." Viktor lets out a stilted exhalation, his hold easing. "Why?"

Viktor smiles for him. He attempts to breathe back in who he was before Yuuri's world disintegrated before his eyes and he hit the ice and Yuuri's heart nearly spurned him. He was happy. He was proud. Viktor wanted to take Yuuri in his arms and kiss him in front of the entire audience. "You won! You got the gold, Yuuri," Viktor says. The excitement reaches his eyes, but there's little to the feeling.

Viktor held the gold in his hands, knew that it wasn't his hands that deserved to feel the weight of that medal. It should have been Yuuri standing on the podium at the GPF. It should have been Yuuri going to the banquet. His name in all of the ISU headlines.

Instead it was Viktor. Stealing the glory by collapsing at the end of his routine. His name in all of the headlines as everyone talked about the athlete that skated himself into the hospital. All of Yuuri's hard work ended up as just another gold that Viktor could hang beside the rest.

"Eh?! I- I what?" Yuuri asks in an inelegant, but adorable sputter. "No, no way, you're lying."

 _Not about this._

He can't tell Yuuri about the rejection episode. Yuuri's very existence is inside of him and he can just disappear. Blink out of time and space. One wrong move, one missed medication or accident can cause another episode that ends everything. Viktor doesn't want to worry Yuuri, to burden his existence any further. So he celebrates right beside Yuuri. Viktor kisses him with everything he's got and pretends that he isn't wondering if it's the last time. He dances with Yuuri like he's happy, skates with him like its Yuuri's exhibition skate and they're wearing matching costumes and their movements are perfectly in sync.

He tells Yuuri that it was just exhaustion that caused him to collapse.

That it wasn't Yuuri's fault.

* * *

Viktor keeps Yuuri from the world until he's healthy again.

Until he loses this lead-in-his-stomach feeling that he's never seeing Yuuri again.

He misses the rest of the ceremonies, the banquet. His face is puffed up from the steroids. He has new medications, some gone, others adjusted. He wears a mask for protection, doesn't go anywhere but the center for what seems like constant check-ins and biopsies.

Viktor does all he can to mend the fracture between Yuuri's heart and his body. It's a tiring endeavor, as are his attempts to keep Yuuri from finding out the truth, but it's far better than the alternative.

Yakov brings him supplies. He doesn't say it, but Viktor can see the regret and self-blame in Yakov's every movement.

"Thank you," Viktor whispers to Yakov's back as he's half out the door, "for letting me compete. I know you thought it was too soon, but you let me. You fought for my entry." Viktor remembers Yuuri's face when he asked Yuuri to compete. He was downright terrified, but so excited. The shine in Yuuri's eyes, the way he'd bitten little imprints into his lip, it makes Viktor's stomach flutter. He can't stop himself from smiling and there's a stinging feeling in the corners of his eyes. "Thank you."

Yakov remains facing away from him, mid-stride on his stoop. He nods.

The screen door slams shut behind him.

* * *

Viktor greets Yuuri with a kiss. It's a reflexive response now, kissing him hello. They spend most of their time in their house. They listen to the rain pelt their skylight. They hold each other's hands as they whisper sweet nothings on the couch. They laugh at their failed shadow puppets as they lay together on the bedroom floor.

They spend most of their time ignoring the outside world, though it dominates Viktor's thoughts.

All over again, Viktor regrets being the one alive. He wants to give his life, his entire world to Yuuri. It wouldn't be hard, Viktor thinks. He could teach Yuuri how to take care of himself, all of the right medications and when to take them. He could tell him all of the warning signs and leave him the doctor's number to call if things went wrong. It would be so easy. Yuuri already knew how to skate like him. How to win. He knew Yakov and Makkachin and all of his skate family. He knew the routes to the rink and all around St. Petersburg. All of Yuuri's family already knew what was going on and would expect him to visit. Perhaps they would even ask him to stay.

Yuuri could do it. He could take over Viktor's life.

And if Yuuri's heart failed him…

Maybe Viktor would be the one to die out.

Yuuri could be safe. Yuuri could get a new heart and live out his days as Viktor Nikiforov, his hero.

"Sometimes I wish that I was inside of someone else," Yuuri admits before Viktor can ask. Yuuri's curled on the other side of the couch, limbs tucked against himself and out of Viktor's reach.

Viktor tries not to take offense to Yuuri's curiosity. Yuuri's not saying that he doesn't want Viktor, or that he would prefer someone better. He's not.

"Like maybe my family. Or a friend."

Viktor sighs, but it hitches in his throat.

Would it have worked? Would this have happened had Yuuri's heart been placed inside of someone else? Would he be able to spend this time with his sister? Or with someone like Phichit? Viktor's thoughts twist with his tongue, like he's swallowed spoiled milk. Would Yuuri be like this with a stranger? Be holding their hand and kissing them hello? Viktor doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to imagine-

"Does that make me a bad person?"

Viktor moves from his spot on the other side of the couch. He crawls over Yuuri, kisses him right above the arch of his brow. "No. It just makes you curious. I don't blame you. You would get more time to spend with the people you love. More than the time I can give you when you're me."

Yuuri grabs for his collar and pulls him close. Viktor's face is shoved into Yuuri's shoulder as he's hugged against Yuuri's chest. He can smell Yuuri, hear his heart hammer like Yuuri still has one. "I love you!" Yuuri says like he's apologizing, placing a quick bandage across the hurt that soured Viktor's expression. "I love this time with you. I just- I wish I wasn't paining you like this either."

"Paining me?" His voice is muffled in the braid of Yuuri's sweater. He gets a bit of the fuzz caught in his teeth. "What are you talking about?" Viktor attempts to surface, but Yuuri's hand is there at the back of his head. He wants to see Yuuri's face. He wants to wipe away the tears he feels dripping onto his ear and chin.

"You'll be okay." Yuuri's voice sounds reassuring, but it's not. Viktor only feels more distressed. He tugs against Yuuri's hold, but it's not Yuuri's hand that stops him. It's like gravity is working against him. The very air around them keeps him there and all Viktor can do is relent. "You'll be okay when I'm gone."

His body slackens. Viktor releases a strangled sound. Breath crackles in his nose, barely contained agony held back. "Please don't leave me."

Yuuri doesn't respond.

* * *

Months pass and Viktor begins to think that things are okay again. He doesn't ask Yuuri to take over. He knows that Yuuri would decline, that he would only be furious at the offer. The thought dissolves into the back of Viktor's mind.

They continue their balanced back and forth. Viktor feels like time is elongated. Supple minutes lend their weight into oversized hours and downright obese days. Viktor's time with Yuuri is built with steel, unbreakable, invincible.

They're walking on the beach and the sand sinks their toes like sugar. When they reach the water's edge, Yuuri laughs. His laugh is a vivid, full sound, as sincere and full of life as Viktor feels.

"The foam tickles," he laughs, hopping from foot to foot. He looks up at Viktor, then stares quietly into his eyes as he stills.

Confusion jerks Viktor's brow. "I know I'm handsome, Yuuri, but there's no need to drool."

"I'm not drooling," Yuuri disputes, even as he draws his fist across his lower lip to make sure. "It's just… your eyes. Seafoam green." He looks back out at the water with pink dusting his cheeks. "They're stunning."

They end up kicked back in the sand. Viktor's head is in Yuuri's lap again. He listens to Yuuri talk. His sentences are braided with memories Viktor invaded and some he's never touched. Eventually, his words take a turn. The fondness leaves him, but he's calm.

Calmer than he should be when he says, "You ever think what it would be like to just drift away? Become the sea. Rain into the Earth."

Something is wrong.

Viktor feels it.

Yuuri feels it.

Viktor grips onto Yuuri's leg, as if he can keep him away from the encroaching waves that now feel like an enemy. Yuuri's fingertips run the length of his brow, an intimate gesture that Viktor is not familiar with. It's instantly labeled as Yuuri.

"Sometimes I feel like that's what's happening to me."

Viktor trembles as his mind wanders into territory he's recently barred himself from.

 _What will happen? Will he just be absorbed into me? All that spirit seeped into my veins, my blood, my bones until there isn't any more Yuuri left? Or will his last attachment to this Earth fall away, and he'll just be gone?_

Yuuri seems at peace with it all, ready to be carried away with the tide.

Viktor isn't. He'll fight tooth and nail to keep this happiness.

No matter the cost.

* * *

Viktor is at a fundraiser dinner. He and Mila are sitting in the corner while Yakov is making the rounds, holding off a stray reporter or two. Mila is on her phone. She holds it up and the camera flashes. Viktor's phone buzzes in his pocket and he knows that it's a notification of Mila's new selfie. Viktor doesn't look, but he imagines that it already has an outrageous number of likes and comments from fans and fellow competitors, Chris and Sara among them.

Mila elbows him, leaning over the arm of his chair to show him her screen. The few locks of hair not tied up in her bun sway into Viktor's face, her curtain earring dangles and hits his cheek. None of it stirs his attention. She frowns.

There's an aquarium in the corner. Small jellyfish float along - exotic, beautiful, but they don't belong.

Viktor wonders which of his worlds is truly superficial. He has never felt more alive than with Yuuri in the world of their making. Here, he can barely manage to smile as Mila persists in trying to talk to him.

Everything around him is just noise. It's too much, too loud. He gets up from his seat and wanders over to the balcony outside. It's blessedly empty, soundless, but Mila follows him out.

"I know you don't want me here."

Viktor turns toward her. He's prepared to assure her, to laugh and smile like she's made a joke.

Mila isn't going to hear it. "But Chris told me to not leave you alone."

His public filter is instantly clogged by her words. They shatter his mask as shock slackens his expression. "You've been talking to Chris?" He almost drops his flute of champagne.

She smirks and waves her phone at him. Her heels click as she nears. "I knew you weren't paying attention earlier. He's been texting me. He's worried."

"About me?" Viktor scoffs. It hides his scream. "He doesn't need to be. I'm fine."

"Don't lie, Viktor. Chris hasn't told me why, but even I can see that something is wrong with you. Would it kill you to lean on someone else for a change?"

The flute slips. The glass shatters on the ground and the little bubbles fizzle into the concrete. Through sheer habit Viktor looks to see if he's been heard, if he's caused a scene that he must mend. The noise continues on.

"It's just us, Viktor." Mila holds his arm, pulls him farther out into the moonlight like they're simply two lovers secluding themselves from the chaos. "I know I must seem like some self-involved teenager, but you can talk to me. I promise to keep it off my twitter," she says coyly as she crosses her heart.

It's the gesture that breaks him.

"I never thought that settling down would be what I would want. All I wanted was to skate. But now," Viktor looks out over the balcony, stares at the water glistening in the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. The off-light of night almost makes the water look green.

Seafoam green.

 _"It's just… your eyes."_

 _"They're stunning."_

"I want it. I want a partner. I want a house. I want drawn out mornings with the person I wake up next to. I want someone who will kiss me awake and complain about my morning breath and… I want all the ribbons and strings and bows. I want… the little yellow fence… But I'll never have any of it."

He glimpses Mila out of the corner of his eyes. She looks a little lost, but she holds her phone to her chest like she understands his wishes, as if she has her own person she dreams about being with in the same way. She probably does. A girl as beautiful and talented as her has to have someone. Viktor has just never thought to consider it.

"Of course you will." Her hand grips onto his forearm, manicured nails shining against the black of his suit. "Viktor," she urges, "You just have to get out there-"

"No. The only person I'll ever love-" Viktor moves out of her hold as his hand dives into the folds of his suit jacket, holding his heart.

Mila's face pales. She gets it. She has to. It's the only reason for her to look so stricken.

" _Yuuri_ ," her glossed lips mouth.

She doesn't know the extent of it. Chris would never tell. But maybe she imagines that he and Yuuri had met before. Maybe they had been secret lovers, in her pretty little mind filled with romance and roses.

It doesn't matter. She gets it. She tells him that she's there for him, that she always will be. She holds him until he can keep himself up. They stay in the quiet on the balcony until Viktor assures her that he's okay. That he's grateful for her company.

The rest is noise.

* * *

Yuuri has booked more time with his family. "A week?" he asks with a bow and pleading notes to his voice. Viktor lifts Yuuri back up by the chin. He scrapes his nails on the underside of his chin in a sweeping gesture and kisses him.

"Have I ever denied you of anything, my dearest Yuuri?"

He crafts a sky in Yuuri's absence. Takes care as he places every star, adjusts their radiance. Everything is calculated, down to the shine of the cosmic dust. He's meticulous and all of the time and trouble is worth it when Yuuri sees.

Yuuri gasps and it's caught behind his hands. "You… You made a constellation of me?"

Viktor pulls Yuuri into him, arms around his waist as he settles his chin on Yuuri's head. "You can see it through our skylight, too."

Yuuri spins in his arms and tackles him to the ground. "How am I supposed to beat that?"

"Romantic gestures don't have to outdo each other."

"You suck," Yuuri pouts as he sticks out his tongue.

"Hey! But I do expect to get some kind of gratitude. Why don't you put that tongue to better use," Viktor suggests as he nips at it before sucking it into his mouth.

"Better use, huh?"

The night sky is brighter when they look back at it, now breathless and tangled together in the grass. Yuuri's heart feels beatless in his chest, and Viktor startles.

Yuuri speaks.

"I won't take over anymore."

Viktor's throat feels dry. He swallows. "Won't or can't."

Yuuri doesn't meet his eyes. He stares up at himself written in the cosmos. "I said goodbye to my family. To Yuuko and Phichit and Chris. Even Makka. There's nothing left for me to do now."

"Yes, there is. Of course there is," Viktor insists. "You can stay. With me."

"I'm okay with this. I've been feeling less and less lately. Becoming less… solid, tangible, I guess." Yuuri snuggles into Viktor's side. "I'm okay with this. I want you to be okay, too."

Viktor looks at the sky and he hates it now. He hates the entire thing, all of the time he spent putting it together while Yuuri was off saying _goodbye_. Why is he the only one angry? Why didn't his family fight Yuuri? Why didn't Yuuko? Or Phichit or Chris? How come they can all just accept this? How come Yuuri can accept this? Why isn't he fighting?

Why isn't he fighting for them?

For their life together?

"I'm satisfied with this. I lived my life… and I got to finish living it with you."

" _Satisfied_ ," Viktor spits.

Yuuri leans on his elbows, looking down at Viktor. "Soon I'll be just a chapter in your story." Yuuri swipes away Viktor's bangs that shadow and hide his burgeoning sense of loss. "And you'll be my ending."

Viktor holds onto Yuuri, fingers digging into the webbing of Yuuri's hands. "Don't leave."

Viktor can't accept it. He's not 'satisfied' with this. He has so much love left to give Yuuri. He would give him the moon, destroy it, if Yuuri so wished. He would decimate it, watch it explode into millions of stars that would glitter in Yuuri's eyes and glow in his smile.

His heart beats more soundly in his chest than it ever did before. Except now it's breaking, being ripped apart in Yuuri's hands.

Yuuri is like a star that's always above him, shining just for him.

Only now the break of dawn has come and Yuuri's light is fading faster than Viktor can stand.

Yuuri is leaving him.

Viktor finally looks at Yuuri, really takes him in. His hair doesn't grow. He doesn't need to sleep or eat. He just… exists. Viktor doesn't want this life for him. He never has.

But he's selfish.

"I'm dead, Viktor. I've already gotten more than I could have ever dreamed."

Viktor nods with a loud sniff. He pulls Yuuri back down and Yuuri rests against his chest.

He knows now. When the time comes, Viktor needs to let Yuuri go.

"The stars will always remind me of you." Viktor doesn't know how he gets the words out. He can't imagine the day that Yuuri is no longer with him. His soul feels like it's being stomped on, crushed.

"I don't know why. I can never shine as bright as a star."

"You do every day. A star just can't see its own light for itself."

"Ugh," Yuuri concedes though he mock-gags at the cheesiness. "Okay, but my magnitude is nothing compared to others," and he pushes his nose into Viktor, trailing his fingers along the seam of Viktor's collar.

"Magnitude?"

"It's the brightness of a star, ranging from the brightest first magnitude to a sixth that is the dimmest of the visible stars. I'm not even a sixth magnitude star. Certainly not a first magnitude star like you. Shining so brilliantly that all of the other stars don't matter."

"If I remember correctly, a star's apparent brightness depends on its distance. First magnitude stars are closer, therefore their light doesn't have to reach very far to be seen. A sixth magnitude star is far away. Its light is dull because it has to shine brighter just to be seen. Its light is stronger than a first magnitude star's could ever hope to be." Viktor pulls Yuuri closer, brushes his mouth through his hair.

He feels like crying, but the tears don't come.

"Never judge a star by its apparent brightness."

* * *

Yuuri is fading.

His world is full of black spots and blank spaces.

Yuuri told him it was happening. Viktor began to accept Yuuri's eventual departure. But it still feels too sudden. Viktor can't face this. Doesn't want to.

He doesn't know why this is happening.

He's been good. More than good. He's been a stellar organ recipient. He's babied Yuuri's heart, taken all of the medications, reported any irregularities, gone to every check-up and damned cardiac rehab session. He's done nothing to put Yuuri's heart in jeopardy. The doctors have assured him that everything's fine. Yuuri's heart isn't rejecting him.

"In fact," the doctor says with an impeccably shiny, straight-toothed smile as she places his file beneath her arm, "I'd say that this heart is completely yours, Mr. Nikiforov."

Completely… his?

No. It's Yuuri's heart. Always Yuuri's

But it makes sense now. Viktor's body is accepting the heart like it's his own. It's becoming his. And Yuuri…

Yuuri has no need for his heart anymore. He can leave.

He can move on.

It gets harder trying to see him. Viktor's near begging when he visits for the final time. Yuuri is practically see through. He's barely there and Viktor wants to rewind time back to the first time he saw him.

In the ice of winter.

Or on Chris' phone.

Or through cab windows.

The waves crash behind Yuuri, but they make no sound. The sky is gone, pitch black, nothing. Their house is missing its walls and half of its rooms. It's on its last legs but the light still streams through the skylight like its spring. A few yellow fence posts still stand.

"I thought I wasn't going to get to say good _bye_." Yuuri's voice cracks. He kisses Viktor.

Viktor can't feel it.

"I was so afraid that you weren't coming back." Viktor remembers those words, spoken so long ago. Just yesterday they were strangers. Two stars so close together in the sky, yet Viktor never saw Yuuri's brightness. Two cars passing each other, yet Yuuri never saw Viktor's curious gaze.

They could have ended like that. But they didn't. They got to have this time together. They got to meet and love and be. Viktor feels more grateful than he ever has.

"I love you, Yuuri. I'll always love you. I'll stare at the stars and I'll tell them. I'll tell you."

"I'll listen." Yuuri smiles through his tears. He holds onto Viktor's fingers even though there's no sensation. His fingers eventually slip right through. "I left you a note."

"Another letter to add to my collection," Viktor jokes without heart.

Yuuri laughs even though it's far from funny. "Promise me that you'll read it."

"I promise."

"I'm not afraid," Yuuri says, his lips quivering. "Wherever I'm going, I'll wait for you."

Viktor wakes and Yuuri is gone. There's a hole where he should be, a coldness that makes Viktor shiver within his jacket. Makkachin whines as she curls closer to him on the couch.

Yuuri is gone.

Viktor doesn't find his note until late in the afternoon when dusk hollows the light of day. He's checked everywhere he can think of. Well, almost everywhere.

It's stashed with the rest of Yuuri's letters. Viktor thinks of Yuuri's last laugh and Viktor sucks in a sharp breath.

Viktor leaves his closet. Tearing open the envelope, Viktor jumps when a picture falls out. Its old, crumpled at the edges and the bottom corner is torn. Viktor hasn't seen it in years.

It's a picture of him and his mother standing together in front of his old house. The most vivid thing in the picture is the vibrant yellow fence that stands out like a summer's dream.

Viktor falls against the wall. It holds him up as he stares at the picture. At his own smiling round face and his mother's seafoam eyes. He swallows as he slips his fingers in and gingerly takes Yuuri's letter out of its envelope.

 _I hope it didn't take you too long to find this. It was the only place I could think of to put it where you wouldn't find it too soon. Sorry for snooping though your things. This picture was the only thing I could find of you before Yakov took you in. I wanted to give you a piece of your past, something to remind you of a day when you were happy. I guess you didn't remember. It still made you happy, so I'm content with that._

 _I don't know what to say. I've wracked my brain, but nothing I come up with is right. Nothing sums up how I feel, so I'm just going to say it._

 _I love you._

 _I've said it so many times by now that it may seem anticlimactic. That doesn't change the fact that I love you. I, Katsuki Yuuri, am completely and truly in love with Viktor Nikiforov._

 _God, I sound like a thirteen year old girl reciting her wedding vows in the mirror of her bedroom. Mari would laugh at me so hard if she read that. But it's the truth. I can't say it in any other way._

 _The truth is that I am afraid. I don't know what's going to happen next. Death is still scary even after I've died, but I know that I can face it now. You've helped me see how strong I am. I can win gold against the best skaters in the world. I can love someone and be loved back. I'm a sixth magnitude star and I'm proud of my light._

 _Thank you for giving me this time, Viktor. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for loving me._

 _Even while I'm gone, my heart will be living inside of you. I'm still a part of you, even if I'm not there to say it. Keep living, and I'll be living right beside you._

 _Until we meet again,_

 _Yuuri_

Viktor slides down the wall to his knees. His hands are shaking so badly that he can no longer read what Yuuri wrote.

He doesn't need to. Yuuri's words are etched into his mind.

His heart.

* * *

Viktor returns to competitions again. He announces to the world that he is skating for Yuuri, the fallen skater who gave him his heart when he died, the skater that will forever remain his hero.

He skates for as long as he can until he retires. He remains undefeated, but Viktor cherishes his one medal the most. Yuuri's, won on his own at the GPF. He offers it to Yuuri's mother one day, asks if she would like to hang it with the rest of Yuuri's accomplishments. She holds it in her hands, kisses it, and then hands it back.

"It deserves to be with you. Yuuri would have wanted it that way."

Viktor hangs it in his new bedroom where he can see it every day. He greets it like he would Yuuri as he goes out for his morning jog.

 _"Of all of the places_. Japan _,"_ Chris complains through the phone. _"Why couldn't you have put down roots here?"_

But Chris knows why. He's planning on visiting after the season is over. He wants to see this new house, a replica of the one Viktor and Yuuri built together, complete with a yellow fence. The lot down the street from Yu-topia is no longer empty.

"Viktor, this pork isn't going to cut itself," Hiroko calls from the kitchen. Her English has gotten better, but so has Viktor's Japanese. She goes back to humming, that same soothing song that makes Viktor's heart tremble, though Viktor can barely hear it over the excited barking of Vicchan and Makkachin as they play under his feet.

 _"Is that… Yuuri's mother?"_

"Yup. Gotta go."

 _"But-!"_

Viktor hangs up and pockets his phone. "Sorry, mama," he says with a bowed head as he enters.

Hiroko wastes no time as she slips his apron over his head and ties the strings around his back in a lopsided bow. "No sorry needed."

Viktor smiles. He feels at home.

They make an extra helping of katsudon and take it to Yuuri's grave. Yuuri's family huddles around it, speaking to the stone and lighting up lanterns.

Viktor stands a little ways away, staring up at the sky.

"I love you," he says to the stars.

In his heart, Viktor knows that Yuuri is listening.


End file.
